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The Horse 

IN AMERICA 

A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE 

VARIOUS TYPES COMMON IN THE UNITED STATES, 

WITH SOMETHING OF THEIR HISTORY AND 

VARYING CHARACTERISTICS 

BY 

JOHN gilmf;r speed 




Illustrated 



NEW YORK 

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 

MCMV 



OCT r, lyub 






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CopyHght. 1905. by 
McCLURE. PHILLIPS & CO. 
Published, October, 1905 , 



THIS BOOK 

THE AUTHOR DEDICATES TO HIS FRIEND 

COLONEL CLARENCE R. EDWARDS, U. S. A. 

WHOSE INHERITED LOVE FOR HORSES HAS 

BEEN CULTIVATED BY STUDY AND 

STRENGTHENED BY PRACTICE 



CONTENTS 

Introduction ... . . i-xii 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Prehistoric and Early Horses 3 

II Arab and Barb Horses 14 

III The Thoroughbred in America 38 

IV The Morgan Horse 75 

V Messenger and the Eaily Trotters . . . .100 

VI Rysdyk's Hambletonian and the Standard 

Bred Trotters 115 

VII The Clay and Clay-Arabian 136 

VIII The Denmark, or Kentucky Saddle-Horse . 148 

IX The Government as a Breeder . . . . .167 

X Foreign Horses of Various Kinds o . . . .178 

XI The Breeding of Mules 187 

XII How to Buy a Horse 210 

XIII The Stable and its Management .... 220 

XIV Riding and Driving 234 

XV Training vs. Breaking 262 

XVI Conformation and Action 272 

Index 279 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Flora Temple Frontispiece 



FACING 
PAGE 



Nimr (Arab) 14 

Naomi and Foal Arab 30 "^ 

Lexington (Thoroughbred) 42' 

Ten Broeck (Thoroughbred) 50 

Longfellow (Thoroughbred) 66 

Domino (Thoroughbred) 72 

The Justin Morgan Type 76 

Duke of Albany (Morgan) 84 

Jubilee de Jamette (Morgan) 94 

Ethan Allen and Running Mate vs. Dexter .... 98 

Rysdyk's Hambletonian 116 

Lou Dillon (Standard-Bred Trotter) 132 

Clay-Kismet (Clay- Arabian) 136 

Nimrod (Clay-Arabian) 146 

A Group of Denmark Mares 150 ' 

Montgomery Chief, Jr. (Inbred Denmark) . . . .158 
Highland Eagle (Inbred Denmark) 166 



INTRODUCTION 



INTRODUCTION 

There have been so many books written about 
horses that in offering a new one I feel that an ex- 
planation, if not an apology, is due. And I am 
embarrassed as to how to frame the explanation 
without seeming to reflect on the books previous- 
ly given to the public. Nothing could be further 
from my desire. Most of these previous books 
have been devoted to special kinds or types of 
horses without any effort to cover a very broad 
field. Some others have been frankly partizan with 
the avowed purpose of proving that this type or 
that was the only one that was worth serious con- 
sideration. All these are interesting, but valuable 
chiefly to the careful student bent on going into 
the subject of horse breeding and horse training 
in all of its branches. To do this an ordinary reader 
would have to study half a hundred books with 



IV THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

the danger of becoming confused in the multi- 
plicity of theories and conflicting statements and 
with the final result of knowing as little in the end 
as in the beginning. In this modest little volume 1 
have endeavored briefly to show how the horses m 
America have been developed and have come to be 
what they are to-day. If I have succeeded even 
partly in my purpose I will have my ample re- 
ward; if I fail, my book will end on a few dusty 
library shelves along with hundreds of others on 
kindred subjects. 

There is a peculiar characteristic of most writ- 
ers on the horse. Let a man be ever so fair in his 
ordinary business and social life, he is apt, when 
he becomes interested in horses, to throw away 
his judicial attitude and change into an advocate 
who sees only one side. When his interest in that 
one side carries him to the length of writing, the 
tendency is to be so partizan that he is even dis- 
courteous to others who do not agree with him. 
This queer disposition to wrangle and dispute is 
due, no doubt, to the fact that horse breeding is 
not yet by any means an exact science, and the 
data, guiding even those who exercise the greatest 



INTRODUCTION V 

care and intelligence, is not trustworthy. We do 
not know with certainty how any of the great 
types has been produced, for the beginnings of all 
of them are covered up by fictions, based on tra- 
ditions not recorded, but handed down from gen- 
eration to generation, or on fictions that have 
been manufactured with ingenious mendacity. 
All this is a pity, but there is no help for it now. 
What we can do is to tell what is true, show what 
has been demonstrated by known achievements 
and go on working in the material that we have at 
hand, so that we may assist in increasing the great 
property value that this country has in its horses. 
That property value is immense. In the begin- 
ning of 1905, the Agricultural Department esti- 
mated that the (taxable) value of the horses in the 
United States was $1,200,310,020, and of mules 
$251,840,378, or a total of $1,452,150,398. This 
is only about eight per cent less than the aggre- 
gate value of the cows, beef cattle, sheep and 
hogs in the whole country. Merely, therefore, 
from an economic standpoint this question of 
preserving and increasing the value of horses is 
one of prime importance. At this particular time 



VI THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

it is a question not only of increasing, but even of 
preserving, this value, for new agencies are com- 
ing into competition with horses for many pur- 
poses and are being substituted for horses in 
many others. The automobiles and the electric 
tramways are not merely passing fads. They 
have come to stay until substituted by something 
else which has not yet swum into our ken. The 
common horses will soon be obsolete except on 
our farms, and even on the farms they ought to be 
given up, for, notwithstanding all the great 
breeding establishments in the various states, by 
far the greater number of the horses are bred on 
the farms at present. That should always be the 
case ; but it may not be so when the time comes 
that is rapidly approaching and a common horse 
will have next to no value at all. Farmers more 
than others need to realize that only such horses 
should be bred that will have a value for other 
than strictly farm work, for a farmer should be 
able to sell his surplus stock with a fair profit. If 
farmers have not the foresight to anticipate the 
inevitable, then they will have to accept the loss 
that will surely ensue. 



INTRODUCTION Vli 

Every breeder whether farraer, amateur or 
professional, should breed to a type. Any other 
method is merely a haphazard waste of time and 
money. When I say breed to a type, I mean always 
a reproducing type. There are several such in this 
country, a few of which belong to us, though most 
of them are of foreign origin. The Thoroughbred 
is English, the Percheron is French, the Hackney 
is English, the Orlof is Russian, the Clydes- 
dale is English, the Morgan is American, 
the Denmark is American, the Clay-Arabian is 
American, and the standard bred trotter a 
kind of " go-as-you-please " mongrel ; nevertheless 
he is considered by many the noblest achieve- 
ment of intelligent American horse breeding. 
When any one goes in for horse breeding on 
either a small or a large scale, whether with one 
mare or with one hundred mares, he should, in 
selecting mates, always strive for a definite type 
in the foal. If intelligence and correct informa- 
tion be guided by experience the results are apt to 
be pleasantly satisfactory. 

The first cardinal principle of horse breeding 
was formulated in England a century and a half 



Vlll THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

ago in the expression: "Like begets like.'* This 
rule has been followed in the creation and main- 
tenance of all the great horse types in the civil- 
ized world, and singularly enough all of them, 
both great and small in size, have descended 
from Arab and Barb stock. This concise rule of 
breeding, " Like begets like," has been misunder- 
stood by some who did not take a sufficiently 
comprehensive view of it. This likeness does not 
refer merely to one thing ; not to blood alone, nor 
to conformation, nor to performance; but to 
blood and to conformation and performance, but 
most of all to blood. Where blood lines, as to like- 
ness, are disregarded, and conformation and per- 
formance are alone considered, the result is sure 
to be a lot of mongrels, some of them, it is true, of 
most surpassing excellence, but as a general 
thing, quite incapable of reproducing themselves 
with any reasonable certainty. 

The great danger always in breeding horses 
and other domestic animals with the idea of im- 
proving a type or a family, is that mongrels may 
be produced. A mongrel is an animal that results 
from the union of dissimilar and heterogeneous 



INTRODUCTION IX 

blood. An improved and established reproducing 
type has hitherto been, and probably always will 
be, the result of the mingling of similar and ho- 
mogeneous blood, crossed and recrossed until 
the similar becomes consanguineous. The Arab 
and Barb, I have said, are the foundation m 
blood of all the great types from the Percheron to 
the Thoroughbred. To be sure, other and dissim- 
ilar blood was used in the beginning of the mak- 
ing of all the types, but there was such crossing 
and recrossing, such grading up by a selection of 
mates, that the blood became similar, and the 
rule: "Like begets like," being constantly follow- 
ed a type becomes established. 

When a type has been established and is of un- 
questioned value to the world, it should be pre- 
served most carefully. The French, the Russians, 
the Germans and the Austrians do this by means 
of Governmental breeding farms. The English 
accomplish the same result by reason of the cus- 
tom of primogeniture and entailed estates. Con- 
tinuity in breeding is essential to its complete suc- 
cess. In this country when a breeder dies, his col- 
lection of horses is usually dispersed by sale to 



X THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

settle his estate. Considering our lack of Govern- 
mental assistance we have done amazingly well 
to become the greatest horse-producing country 
in the world. Our greatness, however, is mainly 
due to the vastness of our area, the fertility of our 
soil and consequent cheapness of pasturage, and 
to the high average intelligence of the American 
people. We have not exercised the scientific intel- 
ligence in breeding that some European people 
have done. So as breeders we have not a great 
deal to be proud of. We have done better as to 
quantity than quality. But we can do better, and 
I am sure that we will, for the time is hard upon 
us when the four-year-old horse that is not worth 
$300 in the market will not be worth his keep. 

There is, however, an important public aspect 
to this question of improving and maintaining the 
breed of horses. Without good horses for cavalry 
the efficiency of an army is very much crippled. 
When our Civil War broke out horse-back riding 
in the North had as an exercise for pleasure been 
generally given up, and nine-tenths of the men 
who went into the service on the Union side could 
not ride. On the other hand, at least seven-tenths 



INTRODUCTION xl 

of those who went into the Confederate army 
could ride. Moreover, the North had a scant sup- 
ply of horses fit for cavalry, while in many States 
of the South such animals were abundant. Here 
we had on one side the material for a quickly- 
made cavalry, and on the other side practically 
no material either in horses or men for such a 
branch of the army. Critics of the war attribute 
the early successes of the South to the superior- 
ity of the cavalry. The Northern side was obliged 
to wait for nearly two years before that arm of 
the service was equal to that of the South. Thus, 
this distressful war was probably continued for 
more than a year longer than it would have been 
had the two sides in the beginning been equally 
supplied with riders and riding horses. And in 
the Japanese-Russian War, now in progress, the 
Japanese are hampered dreadfully by their lack 
of cavalry. They have beaten the Russians time 
and again only to let the Russians get away be- 
cause of the Japanese inability, from lack of 
horses and horsemen, to cut off the line of re- 
treat. It is a most distressingly expensive thing to 
be without horses in time of war; unless proper 



Xll THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

horses are abundant in time of peace, and the 
people who own them use them under the saddle, 
when war comes there is a scarcity of men who 
know how to ride. Good material for cavalry in 
horses and men is an excellent national invest- 
ment. 

In addition to my chapters on the breeding of 
various types I have added several others on the 
keeping, handling and using of horses so that if 
an owner have only this one book, he may be able 
to have at least a little useful information of many 
sorts and kinds. 



THE HORSE IN AMERICA 



CHAPTER ONE 

PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HORSES 

The paleontologists tell us that the rocks abound 
with fossils which show that Equidse were numer- 
ous all over America in the Eocene period. These 
were the ancestors of the horse that was first do- 
mesticated, and though there were millions of 
them on the Continent of North America in the 
period mentioned there were no horses here at all 
when Columbus made his great discovery, and the 
first explorers came to find out what this new In- 
dia was like. The remains of the prehistoric 
horse, when first found, bafiled the naturalists, 
and he was called by Richard Owen Hyracothe- 
rium or Hyrax-like-Beast. The first fossils dis- 
covered showed that the horse was millions and 
millions of years ago under twenty-four inches in 
stature, with a spreading foot and five toes. In his 
development from this beginning the horse fur- 



4 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

nishes one of the most interesting examples of 
evolution. When he had five toes he lived in low- 
lying, marshy land and the toes were needed so 
that he could get about. He had a short neck and 
short jaws, as longer were not needed to enable 
him to feed on the easily reached herbage. As the 
earth became harder, the waters receding, his 
neck and jaws lengthened, as it was necessary for 
him to reach further to crop the less luxuriant and 
shorter grasses. He lost, also one toe after another 
so that he might travel faster and so escape his 
enemies. These toes, of course, did not disappear 
all at once, but grew shorter, until they hung 
above the ground. The "splint bones" on a 
horse's legs are the remains of two of these once 
indispensable toes, while the hoof is the nail of the 
last remaining toe. 

As the neck of the horse grew longer and two 
toes had been dropped, the legs lengthened and 
by the time he became what the scientists call a 
"Neohipparion" he was about three feet high, 
and his skeleton bore a very striking resemblance 
to that of the horse of to-day. The teeth also 
changed with the rest of the animal. In the earli- 



PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HORSES 5 

est specimens discovered the teeth were short 
crowned and covered with low, rounded knobs, 
similar to the teeth of other omnivorous animals, 
such as monkeys and hogs, and were quite differ- 
ent from the grinders of the modern animal. 
When the marshy lands of the too-well watered 
earth had changed into grassy plains the teeth of 
the horse also changed from short crowned to 
long crowned, so that they could clip the shorter 
and dryer grasses and grind them up by thorough 
mastication into the nutritious food required for 
the animal's well being. 

Indeed, the whole history of the evolution of 
the horse by natural selection is a complete illus- 
tration of adaptation to environment. Even to- 
day in the Falkland Islands, where the whole sur- 
face is soft, mossy bogland, the horses' feet grow 
to over twelve inches in length, and curl up so 
that frequently they can hardly walk upon them. 
Where we use horses on hard, artificial roads it is 
necessary to have this toe-nail or hoof pared, and 
protected by shoes. 

Where the horse was first domesticated is a 
matter of dispute upon which historians are not 



6 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

at all agreed. Some say it was in Egypt, some se- 
lect Armenia, and some content themselves with 
the general statement that horses were indige- 
nous in Western and Central Asia. It would be 
interesting to go into this discussion were it not 
that it would delay us too long from the subject in 
hand. At first they were used only in war and for 
sport, the camel being used for journeys and 
transportation, and the ox for agriculture. In- 
deed, I fancy the horse was never used to the 
plough until in the tenth century in Europe. The 
sculptures of ancient Greece and contemporane- 
ous civilizations give us the best idea obtainable 
of what manner of animal the horse was in 
the periods when those sculptures were made. 
Mr. Edward L. Anderson, one of the most 
careful students of the horse and his history, 
says: *' Whether Western Asia is or is not the 
home of the horse, he was doubtless domesti- 
cated there in very early times, and it was 
from Syria that the Egyptians received their 
horses through their Bedouin conquerors. 
The horses of the Babylonians probably came 
from Persia, and the original source of all 



PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HORSES 7 

these may have been Central Asia, from which 
last-named region the animal also passed into 
Europe, if the horse were not indigenous to some 
of the countries in which history finds it. We 
learn that Sargon I. (3800 B.C.) rode in his char- 
iot more than two thousand years before there is 
an exhibition of the horse in the Egyptian sculp- 
tures or proof of its existence in Syria, and his 
kingdom of Akkad bordered upon Persia, giving 
a strong presumption that the desert horse came 
from the last-named region through Babylonian 
hands. It seems after an examination of the rep- 
resentations on the monuments, that the Eastern 
horse has changed but little during thousands of 
years. Taking a copy of one of the sculptures of 
the palace of Ashur-bani-pal, supposed to have 
been executed about the middle of the seventh 
century before our era, and assuming that the 
bareheaded men were 5 feet 8 inches in height, I 
found that the horses would stand about 14 1 
hands — very near the normal size of the desert 
horse of our day. The horses of ancient Greece 
must have been starvelings from some Northern 
clime, for the animals on the Parthenon frieze 



8 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

are but a trifle over 12 hands in height, and are 
the prototypes of the Norwegian Fiord pony — a 
fixed type of a very valuable small horse." 

The British horse is as old as history. He was 
short in stature and heavy of build. New blood 
was infused by both the Romans and the Nor- 
mans, and when larger horses were needed to 
carry heavily-armored knights, Flemish horses 
were introduced both for use and breeding, so 
that by the time the Oriental blood was intro- 
duced they had in England many pretty large 
horses, resembling somewhat the Cleveland Bay 
of the present time, though not so tall by three or 
four inches, and not so well finished. The horses 
that were first brought to America by the English 
were such as I have suggested. But the first 
horses brought hither were not English, but 
Spanish, and these were undoubtedly of Oriental 
blood as were the horses generally in Spain after 
the Moslem occupation. But when the Spanish 
first came there were no horses, as has been said 
before, in either North or South America. Colum- 
bus in his second voyage brought horses with him 
to Santo Domingo. But Cortez, when he landed 



PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HORSES 9 

in 1519 in what is now Mexico, was the first to 
bring horses to the mainland. They were the 
wonder of the Indians who believed that they 
were fabulous creatures from the sun. The wild 
horses of Mexico and Peru were no doubt de- 
scended from the escaped war horses of the Span- 
ish soldiers slain in battle. These escaped horses 
reproduced rapidly, and the plains became popu- 
lous with them. So, also, with the horses aban- 
doned by De Soto, who retuEiied from his Missis- 
sippi expedition in boats leaving his horses be- 
hind. Professor Osborn of the American Museum 
of Natural History, has recently- been conducting 
explorations in Mexico, studying the wild horses 
there, and his conclusions are proof of the accur- 
acy of the surmises which have been made by the 
historians of the early Spanish adventurers. 

Flanders horses were brought to New York in 
1625 and English horses to Massachusetts in 
1629. Previous to these importations, however, 
English horses had been landed in Virginia, and 
in 1647 the first French horses reached Canada, 
being landed at the still very quaint village of Ta- 
dousac. Indeed, during all the colonial times 



10 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

there were many importations as well as much 
breeding, for on horseback was the only way a 
journey could be taken, except by foot or in a 
canoe. They needed good serviceable horses, and 
they obtained them both by importation and 
breeding. I suspect that the general run of horses 
in the Colonial era in New England and along 
the Atlantic seaboard was very similar to the 
horse that is now to be found in the province of 
Quebec, Canada. Every one who has visited this 
province knows that these habitant horses are 
very serviceable and handy, besides being quite 
fast enough for a country where the roads have 
not been made first class. Harnessed to a calash, 
an ancient, two-wheeled, French carriage, they 
take great journeys with much satisfaction to 
their drivers and small discomfort to themselves. 
Then the Colonists had the Narragansett pacer, a 
horse highly esteemed not only for speed but for 
the amble which made his slow gait most excel- 
lent for long journeys. When Silas Deane was the 
colleague of Benjamin Franklin at the French 
Court during the Revolutionary War, he pro- 
posed getting over from Rhode Island one of 



PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HORSES 11 

these pacers as a present for the queen. Indeed, 
there are those who maintain stoutly that the vir- 
tues of the American trotter as well as the Amer- 
ican saddle-horse came from these pacers. That 
may be the case so far as the trotters are con- 
cerned, for of the horses bred to trot fast, as we 
shall presently see, more are pacers than trotters. 
As a matter of fact, however. Barbs are apt to 
pace, and these Narragansetts may have had 
such an origin. In the blood of all our horse types 
there is some proportion of Barb blood, and we 
find pacers among all except Thoroughbreds. I 
am sure I never saw a Thoroughbred that paced, 
or heard of one. 

The history of the American horses with 
which we are concerned to-day may be said to 
have begun after the War of the Revolution. But 
the basic stock upon which the blood of the post- 
revolutionary importations was grafted was most 
important and also interesting. It was gathered 
from every country having colonies in North 
America and blended after its arrival. The Span- 
ish and French blood was strongly Oriental and 
mixed kindly with that from Holland and Eng- 



12 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

land. At any rate, when Messenger came in 1788 
and Diomed in 1799 there was good material in 
the way of horse-flesh ready and waiting to be 
improved. 



CHAPTER TWO 

ARAB AND BARB HORSES 

The Arab horse from Nejd and the Berber horse 
from Barbary are the most interesting and most 
important specimens of the equine race. This has 
been the case as far back as the history of the 
horse runs and tradition makes it to have been so 
for a much longer period. And, moreover, these 
horses in the perpetuation of estabhshed Euro- 
pean and American types are as important to- 
day as ever. From this Nejdee Arabian and Ber- 
ber of Barbary have sprung by a mingHng of 
these ancient bloods with other strains, all of the 
reproducing horse types of signal value in the 
civilized world, including the Percheron of 
France, the Orlof of Russia, the charger of Aus- 
tria, the Thoroughbred of England, the Morgan 
of Vermont, Mr. Huntington's rare but interest- 
ing Clay-Arabians of New York and the Den- 
is 



14 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

marks of Kentucky. The same is the case with 
other types or semi-types, but I only particularize 
these because the mere mention of them shows to 
what uses this singularly prepotent blood can be 
put when the two extremes of equine types, and 
those between the extremes as well, appear to 
owe their reproducing quality to the blood of 
these handsome little animals that have been 
bred, preserved and, so far as possible, monopo- 
lized by the nomadic tribes of Barbary and of 
Nejd. Nejd comprises the nine provinces of Cen- 
tral Arabia, while the Berbers wander all through 
the Barbary states which consist of Morocco, Al- 
geria, Tunis, and Tripoli, but keep as remote as 
possible from what European influence that ex- 
ists in that section of the world. 

To most horsemen in America the name of 
Arab is anathema. They will have none of him. 
So far as their light goes they are quite right in 
their prejudice. But prejudice in this instance, as 
in most others, is the result of ignorance. And I 
trust in the light of what I shall say about the 
Nejdee Arabian, the Berbers of Barbary and the 
influence of this blood on the equine stock of the 



ARAB AND BARB HORSES 15 

world, I may say this without any offense. If I 
give the offense then I preface it with the apology 
that I mean none. The truth is that seven out of 
ten of the Arabian horses taken into Europe or 
brought to America have been inferior specimens 
and not of the correct breed; twenty per cent at 
least have been mongrels and impostures, while 
of the remaining ten per cent not more than one 
per cent have been correct in their breeding, con- 
formation and capacity to do what was expected 
of them. 

Some men reading the history of this type and 
that have persuaded themselves that a few Arabs 
selected personally in Arabia would enable them 
to beat their competitors as breeders and even to 
win against horses that traced back one hundred 
or two hundred years ago to Arab and Barb an- 
cestors. Such folly always resulted in costly disap- 
pointment. This folly and consequent disap- 
pointment will become manifest as my narrative 
proceeds. But before going any further I do not 
wish any of my readers to harbor the notion that 
I think an Arab would stand any chance on an 
ordinary race-course to outrun an English Thor- 



16 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

oughbred, or to out-trot in harness or under sad- 
dle an Orlof or an American. I maintain no such 
absurdity. But I do maintain that all these types, 
so that they may preserve their reproductive ca- 
pacities, must get from time to time fresh infu- 
sions of this blood. That is why the purely bred 
Arabian — and the Nejdee is the purest of all — 
is as valuable to-day as when the Godolphin 
Barb and the Darley Arabian began the regener- 
ation of the English horse into that wonderful 
Thoroughbred, which is one of England's proud- 
est achievements and most constant sources of 
wealth. 

Historical records dating back to the fifth cen- 
tury show that the best quality and the greatest 
number of Arabian horses were to be found in 
Nejd. They are also to be found there to-day, 
and the number has not, so far as the records 
speak, increased. They have never been numer- 
ous, as it has never been the policy of the chiefs to 
breed for numbers, but for quality. It is not true, 
however, that a lack of forage was the restraining 
cause of this comparative scarcity of horses in the 
very section where they have been kept in their 



ARAB AND BARB HORSES 17 

greatest perfection. As a matter of fact, the pas- 
ture land of Arabia is singularly good. The very 
desert, during the greater part of the year, supplies 
suflScient browse for camels; while the pasture 
grass for horses, kine, and above all for sheep on 
the upper hill slopes, and especially inN ejd, is first- 
rate. To be sure there are occasional droughts, 
but few grazing countries in the world are free 
from them. No, the scarcity in horses is not due 
to a lack of food, but to two other reasons entirely 
satisfactory to the chiefs of Nejd. Horses there 
are not a common possession and used by all. On 
the contrary, their ownership is a mark of dis- 
tinction and an indication of wealth, as they are 
never used except for war and the chase and rac- 
ing, the camel carrying the burdens and doing the 
heavy work of the caravans. The second reason 
for the scarcity is that Nejdee horses are very 
rarely sold to be taken out of the province. This 
is not the result of sentiment, but one purely of 
protection and the desire to preserve a monopoly 
in a race that is easily the very purest in the 
world. 
The traditions as to the origin of the Arabian 



18 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

horse are numerous. Some hold that they are in- 
digenous. If this were supported, then the tradi- 
tions would lose interest. But the traditions are 
interesting and in general effect were thus ex- 
pressed by the Emir Abd-El-Kader in 1854, in a 
letter addressed to General Daumas, a division 
commander who served long in Arabia and who 
was later a senator of France. He said that God 
created the horse before man, and then this do- 
mestic animal was handed down : "1st. From 
Adam to Ishmael; 2d, from Ishmael to Solomon; 
3d, from Solomon to Mohammed ; 4th, from Mo- 
hammed to our own times." This tradition, it 
must be said, is very general and comprehensive 
in its scope, but to the Arabs it has a significant 
meaning, as they claim that Ishmael, the bastard 
son of Abraham, was not only one of themselves 
but their founder, for is it not written in the Bible 
that when Hagar, the concubine of Abraham, 
fled into the wilderness, an angel appeared to her 
and said: 

" I will multiply thy seed exceedingly that it shall not be 
numbered for multitude. Behold, thou art with child, and 
shalt bear a son and shalt call his name Ishmael; and he 



ARAB AND BARB HORSES 19 

will be a wild man ; his hand will be against every man, and 
every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the 
presence of all his brethren." 

Indeed, this son of Abraham was the very per- 
sonification of the Arabian people throughout 
their whole history, and he needed horses as the 
Arabian people have needed them ever since to 
assist in the forays and expeditions which give to 
life its spice and its prize. Then again, there is a 
tradition that Nejd got its horses from Solomon; 
another that they came from Yemen. This seems 
. to me the same tradition, for Yemen's ancient 
name was Sheba ; and what more natural than for 
Solomon to have rewarded with gifts of horses the 
Queen of Sheba's people for giving him one of his 
most satisfactory wives. Then there is a story that 
has been builded up in our own days by a man 
who was a Methodist minister before he became 
a manufacturer of trotting-horse pedigrees in this 
country. This interesting man in his old age, if he 
did not resume the occupation of his youth, did 
study the Bible in the endeavor to show that the 
Arabian horses never had been much in quality 
and many in numbers, and that their antiquity 



20 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

was not of any importance for they had not been 
taken into Arabia from Armenia until the third 
century. A century or so made httle difference to a 
man hke Wallace, who unwittingly gave to these 
horses two centuries more of record than history 
really accounts for. But whether the Nejdee Arabs 
were indigenous or brought into the land by Ish- 
mael, or sent by Solomon, or taken there by the 
Armenians, it is certain that they were there a 
hundred years before Mohammed became a 
prophet, and in characteristics of size, temper 
and performance they were the same that we find 
to-day. So that gives us a long record of fifteen 
centuries during which we know that the greatest 
care has been taken to keep them pure in blood 
and to train them to the work for which they were 
required. 

The tradition as to the Berber horse of Bar- 
bary is much simpler, as these robber tribes have 
not developed poets or historians, and content 
themselves with saying that the horses have al- 
ways been there. And so far as we are concerned 
that statement is as satisfactory as any other. But 
we do know that supplies of these horses were ob- 



ARAB AND BARB HORSES 21 

tained by Saladin in his domestic wars, and were 
used also in his contests with the faith-breaking 
crusaders who vainly tried to destroy the Moslem 
rule and obtain perpetual possession of Jerusa- 
lem. From the earliest times it has been a mooted 
point as to which was the superior, the Berber or 
the Nejdee. Among the Europeans who have 
lived much in Egypt this is still a disputed mat- 
ter, and when Count de Lesseps was a young 
man he endeavored to decide the question by a 
series of races at 4 J kilometers (about 2i miles). 
Other horses, however, were admitted. In the 
first heat there were three Nejdee horses all bred 
in Cairo — 'the purity of the blood being open to 
suspicion — - and one Syrian horse. A Cairo-bred 
Nejdee was the winner. In the second heat there 
were three Nejdee horses, one bred in Cairo, and 
one Barbary horse from Tunis owned and ridden 
by Count de Lesseps himself. The Barb won. In 
the third heat there were three Nejdee horses, 
one of them ridden by de Lesseps, and one Sa- 
mean horse. A Cairo-bred Nejdee horse won. In 
the fourth heat there were three Nejdee horses 
and one Egyptian horse from Abfeh. A Nejdee 



22 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

horse was the winner. Then came the final heat 
between the winners of the trial heats. The result 
was that the de Lesseps Barbary horse was first, 
a Cairo-bred Nejdee horse was second, and Nej- 
dee horses third and fourth. 

This trial was cited by General Daumas as evi- 
dence that at least the Barb was not inferior to 
the Nejdee in fleetness. It only indicates to me 
that Count de Lesseps was the shrewder of the 
contestants and had selected the best individual 
animal among the sixteen competitors. However, 
the Emir Abd-El-Kader believed in the superior- 
ity of the Barbs, and as an instance of this, quot- 
ed the practice of Aamrou-El-Kais, an anci<5nt 
King of Arabia, who " took infinite pains to secure 
Barbary horses wherewith to combat his enemies^ 
He was doubtful of success if obliged to trust 
himself to Arab horses. It is not possible, in my 
opinion, to give a more invincible proof of the su- 
periority of the Barb." This illustration may 
have been convincing to the learned Musselman, 
but to-day we should want, I think, a more mod- 
ern instance to be satisfied; and we should want 
to know more of the individuals in the de Les- 



ARAB AND BARB HORSES 23 

scps's trials than has been recorded. That the 
Barbs have had as great influence in the creation 
of other types as the Nejdees is undoubtedly true, 
for while it has never been easy to get the best 
specimens of Barbary horses for exportation, it 
has never been so difficult as to get Nejdee Ara- 
bians of equivalent excellence. The Berbers were 
natives of Palestine and expelled by one of the 
Persian kings. They emigrated to Egypt, but 
were refused permission to settle, so they crossed 
over to the other side of the Nile. They were ad- 
venturesome robbers, as they are to-day, and no 
doubt have taken their horses with them from 
their first setting out from Palestine. So I quote 
Abd-El-Kader again : " As for the Berbers them- 
selves, everything proves that they have been 
known from time immemorial, and that they 
came from the East to settle in the Maghreb, 
where we find them at the present day." 

Europe did not know much of these Arab and 
Barb horses until the Arabs and Moors invaded 
and conquered Spain. The invasion of Spain be- 
gan in the eighth century and the rule lasted until 
into the thirteenth century, though the Moors 



24 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

held Grenada for two centuries later. What be- 
came a conquest was begun merely as a raid for 
rich booty, and, of course, the Arabs, of whom it 
has been said, "their kingdom is the saddle," 
were mounted. The Berbers, of course, took their 
horses, and it is likely that during those long cen- 
turies, it was the first time out of the Sahara that 
Arabian and Barb horses were bred extensively 
and their blood united. It is undoubtedly a fact 
that after the expulsion of these conquerors, 
Spain was well supplied with excellent horses, 
horses which assisted the armies of Spain to hold 
what her navigators had discovered. The pil- 
grims returning from Palestine, also told of the 
excellent horses in the East, and the Crusaders, 
more practical men, had all the evidence that 
they needed in their battles with the Musselman 
to enable them to testify to the hardiness and the 
fleetness of the horses of the desert. And so when 
lighter cavalry was needed to replace the heavily- 
armed knights, whose armor the use of gunpow- 
der had made obsolete, the soldiers and statesmen 
of the seventeenth century knew where to look 
for the blood that would improve the home-bred 



ARAB AND BARB HORSES 25 

horses. It was as difficult then as now to get 
Arabs and Barbs of the best blood, but some at 
least were obtained, and from the beginning in 
England in the earliest years of the eighteenth 
century we trace back to Eastern horses to find 
the founders of the wonderful Thoroughbreds, 
which in their way are the best horses the world 
has seen. In France, too, there were many im- 
portations for the upbuilding of the native stock, 
but this took a different direction, and we are not 
so much concerned with it as with the English. 

The English stud book of the Messrs. Weath- 
erby, the first effort to keep trustworthy records 
of the breeding of horses, begins with 1700, the 
only Eastern horse mentioned before this being 
the Byerly Turk, a charger used by Captain By- 
erly in Ireland in 1689. Then they had the Bar- 
ley Arabian, Markham's Arabian, the Alasker 
Turk, Leede's Arabian and the Godolphin Barb. 
The most important of these were the Godolphin 
Barb and the Darley Arabian. We do not know 
exactly whence any of these came, nor do we 
know the pedigree of any. Indeed, to know, or 
pretend to know the pedigree of a Nejdee or Ber- 



26 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

ber horse is to show ignorance or to confess im- 
posture. The breeders do not keep or give pedi- 
grees except when they wish to bolster up the 
merits of an inferior animal. And then they do it 
because they have been asked to do so by Euro- 
pean or American purchasers not acquainted 
with the Arab practices. It seems as sensible to 
ask an Arab for the pedigree of a horse as to ask a 
diamond merchant for the pedigree of a stone. 
The Arabs have had these horses time out of 
mind. They know them to be purely bred. What 
more could a sensible man want ? But if the pur- 
chaser insists, then he may have any kind of pedi- 
gree that seems to please him most. He can have 
pure Nejdee, pure Barb, a cross between the two, 
or any admixture of Egyptian, Syrian, or Turkish 
blood that best suits his taste. But as a matter of 
fact, these Eastern pedigrees are pure fakes, 
merely made up things, such, for instance, as the 
recorded pedigree of the famous Hambletonian, 
the founder of the standard bred trotter in Amer- 
ica. To the Arabs in their breeding, pedigree 
makes no more difference in mating than it does 
to the birds of the air or the beasts of the forest. 



ARAB AND BARB HORSES 27 

They know that they have animals of pure blood 
and that the progeny of them will still be pure no 
matter how closely the parents may be related. 
There is selection, of course, as inferior males are 
not permitted to be sires. Instead of that they are 
sometimes destroyed, or sent to Syria and even to 
Mesopotamia to serve the mares of those re- 
gions where the mares are Arabs but not pure 
Nejdees. Here is one queer fact about the Arab 
and Barb blood, and proof also of its wonderful 
prepotency. So long as it is mingled with other 
blood not too heterogeneous, the most close in- 
breeding appears not only to do no harm, but ac- 
tually to do good. This is particularly so with the 
English Thoroughbred, the American Morgan, 
and the Kentucky Denmark. 

All we are told about the Darley Arabian is 
this. Mr. Darley of Yorkshire, had a brother who 
was a merchant in Aleppo. This brother brought 
home a black bay * stallion some 14 hands in 
stature, about 1700. He became in 1707 the sire 
of Flying Childers, the greatest race-horse in 
England and the progenitor of most of those on 

* A very unusual color for a Nejdee. 



28 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

the running turf in America and England to-day. 
The dam of Flying Childers was also rich in Ori- 
ental blood, as she was an inbred Spanker and 
Spanker was by D'Arcy's Yellow Turk from 
the daughter of Morocco Barb and Old Bald 
Peg, the latter being by an Arab horse from 
a Barb mare. So we see that this first great 
English race-horse was almost of pure Eastern 
blood. 

Of Markham's Arabian we only know that he 
met with the disapproval of the then Master of 
Horse, the Duke of Newcastle, and had scant 
chance. Of the Godolphin Barb we know very lit- 
tle previous to his coming to England, where he 
was held in such little esteem that he was used as 
a teaser for Hobgoblin. We are told, however, 
that he was first taken to France and held of 
such little account that he was used as a cart horse, 
in Paris. He was finally brought to England about 
1725, and became the property of Lord Go- 
dolphin. He was a brown bay, 15 hands high, and 
with an unnaturally high crest. He served Rox- 
ana in 1731, the produce being Lath, next to 
Flying Childers the greatest horse in England in 



ARAB AND BARB HORSES 29 

the first half of the eighteenth century. Roxana 
was by Bald Galloway, her dam sister to Chan- 
ter by the Alasker Turk from a daughter by 
Leedes's Arabian and a mare by Spanker. Here 
we see again the value of these crosses of Oriental 
blood. From the mating of the Godolphin Barb 
and Roxana also came Cade, the sire of Regulus, 
the grandam of that most marvelous horse, 
Eclipse. When all this had happened the English 
were sure they were on the right road. And they 
have kept on that road with great persistency, 
not going back, however, in my opinion, fre- 
quently enough to the pure Nejdee and Berber 
stock for fresh infusions. That they have not 
done this is natural enough, however. A breeder 
wants results quickly. To get a collateral strain 
from fresh Arab and Barb blood equal to the pres- 
ent thoroughbred would probably take fifty 
years. No private breeder cares to do that. And 
the English government does not officially breed 
horses. The French, the Austrians and the Rus- 
sians all, however, have agents in Arabia trying 
to buy the animals that are best suited to do just 
what I have suggested. And they all succeed. It is 



30 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

too much, however, to expect this from a private 
breeder. * 

One, however, in this country has had the 
courage and the tenacity of purpose to do this. I 
allude to Mr. Randolph Huntington, of Oyster 
Bay on Long Island. Mr. Huntington has min- 
gled Arab and Barb blood with that of the Henry 
Clay family to which he is very partial. His suc- 
cess in creating a reproducing type has been dem- 
onstrated in the face of handicaps that would 
have worn out the patience of a less tenacious and 
determined man. This experiment of Mr. Hunt- 
ington makes a story of its own which I shall 
tell in a later chapter. 

From the time that superior horses began to be 
imported into this country, and that was in the 
Colonial era, there have always been a few Arabs 
and Barbs brought over of various degrees of ex- 

* According to the reckoning of Major Roger D. Upton of the 9th 
Royal Lancers, there were used in the formation of the Enghsh stud from 
the time of James I, to the beginning of the 19th Century, Eastern horses 
to this extent: 101 Arab stalHons, 7 Arab mares, 42 Barb stalhons, 24 Barb 
mares, 1 Egyptian stalHon, 5 Persian stalHons, 20 Turkish stallions, and 
2 "Foreign" stallions, or 210 in all. In the popular mind of all of these 
were classed as Arabs. This is not right, as the real Arab is much purer in 
blood than the others, though the Barbs have virtues by no means to be 
despised. 



ARAB AND BARB HORSES 31 

cellence. Of course, all of the English Thorough- 
breds were rich in the blood, Messenger among 
them. They came also into Canada with the 
French, and the Spaniards who had crossed the 
Mississippi and gone to California from Mexico 
brought many horses all presumably of this 
breed. The hardy Mustangs of the West, which 
were a very distinct type, were evidently de- 
scended from the castaways of the Spanish ex- 
plorers. To President Jefferson there came a gift 
of Arab stallions and mares. These were sold and 
the money turned into the treasury. After Ibra- 
heem Pasha overran Arabia in 1817, and took 
several hundred head of Nejdee horses to Egypt 
it was easier for a time to buy them for exporta- 
tion. And from there at about this time there were 
several importations into America. This supply, 
however, was soon exhausted, as the Egyptians 
are not skilled horse breeders. Besides, the 
French got the pick of this captured lot. 

Then again, Teysul, King of Nejd, made a 
present of forty stallions and mares to Abdul- 
Azeez, Sultan of Turkey. From this source came 
Zilcaadi, the grandsire of the great Morgan horse 



32 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

Golddust, and also the Arab stallion Leopard, 
given to General Grant in 1879, when the Barb, 
Linden Tree, was also presented to him by the 
Sultan. It was with these two Grant stallions, by 
the way, that Mr. Huntington began the experi- 
ment I just alluded to. 

What gave the Arab horse a kind of disrepute in 
America was the experiments of Mr. A. Keene 
Richards. Mr. Richards was a man of wealth and 
education and a breeder of race-horses in the Blue 
Grass section of Kentucky. In studying the his- 
tory of the English Thoroughbred he came to the 
conclusion he would like to get fresh infusions of 
the original blood. He went to Arabia, and per- 
sonally selected several stallions. These he mated 
with his Thoroughbred mares, and when the colts 
were old enough he entered them in the races. 
They were not fast enough to win even when con- 
ceded weight. He went again, this was about 
1855, taking with him the animal painter, Troye. 
They took their time, and came back with a su- 
perior lot. Mr. Richards tried over again the 
same experiment with the same result. The colts 
did not have the speed to beat the Thoroughbreds. 



ARAB AND BARB HORSES 3S 

It seems to me that any one except an incurable 
enthusiast would have anticipated exactly what 
happened. If Mr. Richards had waited several 
generations and then injected the new infusions 
of the Arab blood, the result probably would have 
been quite different. The Civil War came along 
about this time, however, and the experiment 
ended in what was considered a failure. But that 
blood taken to Kentucky at that time by Mr. 
Richards has been valuable in an unexpected way, 
for it has been preserved in the half-bred horses in 
the horse-breeding section, and it crops out all the 
time in those wonderful saddle-horses of the Den- 
mark strain, which are sent all over the country 
to delight the lovers of horseback exercise as well 
as to monopolize the ribbons in the horse shows. 
Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, in England, has had experi- 
ences similar to Mr. Richard's. But he has gone 
the same wrong road, and has been in too much 
of a hurry. Continuity in breeding is something 
beyond the capacity of an individual; his life is 
not long enough. That is why every government 
should have a stud to keep up the standard of the 
horses. In the United States the interests are so 



34 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

diverse that it is not likely that this will soon be 
done in an extensive way, though already begun 
on a small scale, but each State, whose people 
are horse breeders, should do something of the 
sort, so that the success of an undertaking might 
not depend upon the uncertain life and more 
uncertain fortunes of any one man. 

In Arabia the horses are trained at a very early 
age. Indeed, the suckling colt is handled almost 
from his birth. As a yearling he is trained to obey, 
exercised with the halter and the bit. At two- 
years old he is ridden gently but without fear of 
hurting him. At three there is a let-up in his 
work, so that he may acquire his full growth ; but 
he is used enough to keep him from forgetting 
what he has been taught. At four he is consid- 
ered full-grown and is put to as hard service as 
the Arab usually knows. It is a mistaken idea 
that the Arab horse is considered a member of 
the family to which he belongs, and that he is 
pampered, petted and caressed by the women and 
children, and stabled in the same tents as his 
owners. Those are all fanciful ideas of the poets. 
On the contrary, an Arab horse is early immured 



ARAB AND BARB HORSES 35 

to hardships, so that in emergency he may sub- 
sist on scant food and Httle water. Every one has 
heard it said that an Arab would give his last 
crust to his horse rather than eat it himself. I 
readily grant that in some cases he would do so, 
and so would any other man of sense in a like pre- 
dicament. The Arabs are great robbers and won- 
derful chaps to run away. In the desert they do 
not have telegraphs and telephones to intercept 
a fleeing thief. There it is a question of the fastest 
and longest enduring horse. So of course, a fleeing 
Arab, with his pursuers hot on his track, would 
give his last crust to his horse rather than eat it 
himself. He would be a fool if he did not. That 
last crust might be the very fuel that would keep 
life and strength in his engine of escape. The 
Arab is not a sentimentalist except when he talks 
or makes poetry. In his words he exhausts his 
whole supply. Beneath them he is a very shrewd, 
cold and able man of affairs. 

In his horses the Arab has immemorially had 
the means to gratify his vanity, to give him his 
best beloved sport, to enable him to make war, 
and, above all, to run away. The distances that 



36 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

these norses can go on scant rations and small 
quantities of water seem incredible, while that 
they can carry heavy weight without inconven- 
ience is entirely true, for I have tried them. But 
we have heard wierd stories of them from the Ara- 
bic poets themselves, and also from the English 
who have used what they could get for their 
sports in India, where pony racing has ever been, 
since the English occupation, a most attractive 
diversion. A frequent expression that one comes 
across in old books of life in India is that some 
named Arab horse had a head so small that it 
could be put in a quart cup. That, of course, was 
an absurd exaggeration, but they undoubtedly 
have very small and handsome heads. Their 
heads, I am sure, were never so small nor their 
necks so long as the painters have represented 
the heads and necks of the Darley Arabian and 
the Godolphin Barb to have been. At that time in 
England, however, the painters even took the lib- 
erty of exaggerating the length of neck and di- 
minutiveness of head of the women who sat to 
them. It was the fashion of the time, and to that 
fashion we owe the loss of correct likenesses of 



ARAB AND BARB HORSES 37 

two of the famous horses of those breeds that have 
left their impress upon the fleetest racers in the 
world, besides contributing the reproducing ca- 
pacity to all the horse types that amount to any- 
thing in the civilized world. 



CHAPTER THREE 

THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 

In the previous chapter I have told, as well as I 
could/how the English race-horse was developed 
by a commingling of Oriental blood with that of 
horses that had been used for sporting purposes 
in our mother country. I confess that my expla- 
nation must seem very slipshod to any who are 
looking for a mathematically exact exposition of 
facts. Nothing would have pleased me better 
than to have been able to gratify the natural 
craving that people have for exactness. But I 
cannot be less general than I have, for more 
specific information is not at my command. It was 
simply demonstrated by practical experiments 
that the mixture of the bloods mentioned produced 
a very fast and sturdy horse that was superior to 
what had previously been known in England, to- 
gether with the more important fact that this 

38 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 39 

new Anglo-Arab was a type that was reproducing 
and kept on improving in speed and staying qual- 
ities so long as the cardinal principle of breeding : 
"like produces like'* was adhered to with the 
comprehensive intelligence which made the rule 
embrace performance, conformation and blood. 
To the narrow-minded the law "like produces 
like," indicates that the progeny of the fastest 
stallion and the fastest mare, when breeding for 
speed, would be faster than either parent. It is 
a well-known fact that mares whose fleetness and 
gameness has been demonstrated by long careers 
on the turf are rarely successful as dams. Of 
course, there have been exceptions to this general 
statement, but notwithstanding these exceptions, 
the narrow-minded application of the rule breaks 
down just at this point. It is likeness in blood, 
conformation and general characteristics that the 
rule more particularly refers to. At any rate, the 
English had, by the middle of the eighteenth 
century, developed a distinctive type of horse of 
most marvelous fleetness and courage and with a 
blood prepotency that has been so great, that after 
a century and a half the Thoroughbred is as much 



40 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

improved over what he was at the beginning as 
the beginners were better than the common 
stock of England a century earlier. And this is 
the type that we call to-day in America the 
Thoroughbred. 

The importation of the Thoroughbred into this 
country began in Colonial Virginia, where there 
was then probably more sporting blood than 
there is now, when it cannot be said to be at all 
pallid, but on the contrary very red. The first 
Thoroughbred of which there is record, and the 
record is not as exact as we should like, was 
brought to Virginia in 1730, by Messrs. Patton 
and Gist, and was called Bulle Rock. He was 
said to have been foaled in 1718, and to have been 
sired by the Darley Arabian, first dam by the 
Byerly Turk. That was good breeding, and the 
gentlemen of Virginia accepted, to an extent, at 
least, the invitation of Bulle Rock's owners to use 
his services in improving the general stock of the 
Old Dominion, for every now and then in the very 
oldest records he appears in the genealogy. How 
good the horses were that were landed in Virginia 
previous to this time, we can not say, but only 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 41 

presume that they were as good as the importers 
could find and afford to buy, for they were fox 
hunters and hard riders from the beginning of 
their coming. After Bulle Rock's coming to Vir- 
ginia, very quickly Dabster, Jolly Ranger, Janus, 
and Fearnaught followed. 
yV The South Carolinians were not long behind 
the Virginians in their importations, and by 1760 
a jockey club had been established in Charleston, 
and regular race meetings were held. Many of 
the wealthy land owners imported and bred 
horses for these contests. In the same year that 
this club was founded, Colonel De Lancey, of 
New York, brought out Lath from England, and 
a little later Wildair, the horse supposed by some 
to have been the great grandsire of the dam of 
Justin Morgan, founder of the Morgan type of Ver- 
mont. About the same time there came to New 
York the Cub Mare and Fair Rachel, both still 
famous in the pedigrees in the "American Stud 
Book." These matrons found homes in Virginia, 
and assisted in the making of those old time 
"four mile heat" horses, the only kind which our 
ancestors deemed really first rate. Before the 



42 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

Revolutionary War there was much racing in 
Long Island as well as in Virginia and the Car- 
olinas, but the great contests between states and 
sections did not begin till a later date. During the 
Revolutionary War there were few importations of 
Thoroughbreds, but when the young country had 
a little recovered in her industries from the effects 
of that conflict, the importations began again and 
in 1788 the gray stallion Messenger, the founder in 
some measure of our trotting stock, was brought 
out, and in 1799 the Derby winner Diomed — 
the most important of all horses, so far as race- 
horses in America are concerned — came out to 
Virginia. Of Messenger, much will be said in the 
proper place; of Diomed, here is the place to 
speak of his record and his influence on the 
Thoroughbreds born to America. As a race-horse 
he was par excellence the horse of his day in 
England, carrying practically everything before 
him while that day lasted. But he was kept in 
training too long — for what may be called two 
days instead of one — and rather lost his fame 
before he was retired to the stud. In the stud he 
was successful, but was not fashionable, his 




o c 
2 - 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 43 

standing fee being reduced to two guineas before 
he was sold to Colonel Hoomes to be taken to 
Virginia. In Virginia he was an immense success 
as a sire, and few successful horses of American 
stock up to the present time lack a strain of this 
blood. Among his American progeny were Sir 
Archie, Florizel, Potomac, Peacemaker, Top 
Gallant, Hamiltonian, Vingt-un, Duroc, Hamp- 
ton, Commodore Trixton, the dam of Sir Henry 
and the dam of Eliza White. He was in the stud 
only eight years in this country, but left an im- 
perishable impression. While he lived he domi- 
nated all other stallions in America, and after- 
wards his sons worthily took his place. He was a 
chestnut, 15.3 in stature, and was got by Florizel 
out of a Spectator mare, her dam by Blank, gran- 
dam by Childers out of Miss Belvoir by Gray 
Grantham, and so forth. The greatest race- 
horse of Diomed's get in America was Sir 
Archy; and Sir Archy rivaled his sire's per- 
formances in the stud. He was retired early and, 
living to a great age, had opportunities denied to 
Diomed. 

Before the death of Sir Archy, racing was well 



44 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

established in America in several sections and was 
pre-eminently the sport of gentlemen. The 
wagers made were heavy — would be considered 
heavy to-day when the sport has become defiled 
by being very much of a gambler's game — but 
the races run were comparatively few. Section 
against section soon became popular — the North 
against the South, Virginia against South Caro- 
lina, Kentucky against Tennessee, and so on. 
The first, and in many regards the most import- 
ant of these contests, was a race at four mile 
heats over the Union Course on Long Island in 
1823, for a wager of $20,000 a side. Sir Henry, 
the representative of the South, was by Sir 
Archy, dam by Diomed and grandam by Bel 
Air. He was four years old, and carried 108 
pounds. Eclipse (or American Eclipse) was by 
Duroc, his dam being Miller's Damsel by 
Messenger. He was nine years old and carried 
126 pounds. So it will be seen that the contestants 
were both grandsons of Diomed; indeed. Sir 
Henry was a grandson through both sire and dam. 
The description of the race I take from that en- 
tertaining book, "Figures of the Past," by the 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 45 

late Josiah Quincy, with the consent of the pub- 
Ushers, Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., of Boston. 
Here is what Mr. Quincy wrote from his diary. 

*' eclipse" against the world 

*'On the 27th of May, 1823, nearly fifty-seven 
years ago, there was great excitement in the city 
of New York, for on that day the long-expected 
race of ' Eclipse against the world ' was to be de- 
cided on the race-course on Long Island. It was 
an amicable contest between the North and the 
South. The New York votaries of the turf — a 
much more prominent interest than at present — 
had offered to run Eclipse against any horse that 
could be produced, for a purse of $10,000; and 
the Southern gentlemen had accepted the chal- 
lenge. I could obtain no carriage to take me to the 
course, as every conveyance in the city was en- 
gaged. Carriages of every description formed an 
unbroken line from the ferry to the ground. They 
were driven rapidly, and were in very close con- 
nection; so much so that when one of them sud- 
denly stopped, the poles of at least a dozen car- 
riages broke through the panels of those pre- 



46 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

ceding them. The drivers were, naturally, much 
enraged at this accident; but it seemed a neces- 
sary consequence of the crush and hurry of the 
day, and nobody could be blamed for it. The 
party that I was with, seeing there was no chance 
of riding, was compelled to foot it. But after plod- 
ding some way, we had the luck to fall in with a 
returning carriage, which we chartered to take 
us to the course. On arriving, we found an as- 
sembly which was simply overpowering; it was 
estimated that there were over one hundred 
thousand persons upon the ground. The con- 
dition of the race were four-mile heats, the best 
two in three; the course was a mile in length. A 
college friend, the late David P. Hall, had pro- 
cured for me a ticket for the jockey-box, which 
commanded a view of the whole field. There was 
great difficulty in clearing the track, until Eclipse 
and Sir Henry (the Southern horse), were 
brought to the stand. They were both in brave 
spirits, throwing their heels high into the air; 
they soon effected that scattering of the multi- 
tude which all other methods had failed to ac- 
complish. And now a great disappointment fell, 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 47 

like a wet blanket, on more than half the spec- 
tators. It was suddenly announced that Purdy, 
the jockey of Eclipse^ had had a diflBculty with his 
owner and refused to ride. To substitute an- 
other in his place seemed almost like giving up 
the contest; but the man was absolutely stubborn, 
and the time had come. Another rider was pro- 
vided, and the signal for the start was given. I 
stood exactly opposite the judges' seat, where the 
mastering excitement found its climax. Off went 
the horses, every eye straining to follow them. 
Four times they dashed by the judges' stand, and 
every time Sir Henry was in the lead. The spirits 
of the Southerners seemed to leap up beyond con- 
trol, while the depression of the more phlegmatic 
North set in like a physical chill. Directly be- 
fore me sat John Randolph, the great orator of 
Virginia. Apart from his intense sectional pride, 
he had personal reasons to rejoice at the turn 
things were taking ; for he had bet heavily on the 
contest, and, it was said, proposed to sail for Eu- 
rope upon clearing enough to pay his expenses. 
Half an hour elapsed for the horses to get their 
wind, and again they were brought to the stand. 



48 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

But now a circumstance occurred which raised 
a deafening shout from the partizans of the North. 
Purdy was to ride. How his scruples had been 
overcome did not appear, but there he stood be- 
fore us, and was mounting Eclipse. Again, amidst 
breathless suspense, the word "Go!" was heard, 
and again Sir Heyiry took the inside track, and 
kept the lead for more than two miles and a half. 
Eclipse followed close on his heels and, at short 
intervals, attempted to pass. At every spurt he 
made to get ahead, Randolph's high-pitched and 
penetrating voice was heard each time shriller 
than before: 'You can't do it, Mr. Purdy! You 
can't do it, Mr. Purdy! You can't do it, Mr. 
Purdy ! ' But Mr. Purdy did do it. And as he took 
the lead what a roar of excitement went up ! Tens 
of thousands of dollars were in suspense, and, 
although I had not a cent depending, I lost my 
breath, and felt as if a sword had passed through 
me. Purdy kept the lead and came in a length or 
so ahead. The horses had run eight miles, and 
the third heat was to decide the day. The con- 
fidence on the part of the Southern gentlemen 
was abated. The manager of Sir Henry rode up 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 49 

to the front of our box and, calling to a gentle- 
man, said: 'You must ride the next heat; there 
are hundreds of thousands of Southern money 
depending on it. That boy don't know how to 
ride; he don't keep his horse's mouth open!' The 
gentleman positively refused, saying that he had 
not been in the saddle for months. The manager 
begged him to come down, and John Randolph 
was summoned to use his eloquent persuasions. 
When the horses were next brought to the stand, 
behold the gentleman* appeared, booted and 
spurred, with a red jacket on his back, and a 
jockey cap on his head. On the third heat Eclipse 
took the lead, and, by dint of constant whipping 
and spurring, won by a length this closely con- 
tested race. 

"There was never contest more exciting. Sec- 
tional feeling and heavy pecuniary stakes were 
both involved. The length of time before it was 
decided, the change of riders, the varying for- 
tunes, all intensified the interest. I have seen the 
great Derby races ; but they finish almost as soon 
as they begin, and were tame enough in com- 

* Arthur Taylor, a Virginian, 



50 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

parison to this. Here for nearly two hours there 
was no abatement in the strain. I was uncon- 
scious of everything else, and found, when the 
race was concluded, that the sun had actually 
blistered my cheek without my perceiving it. 
The victors were, of course, exultant, and Purdy 
mounted on Eclipse, was led up to the judges* 
stand, the band playing, 'See the Conquering 
Hero Comes. ' The Southerners bore their losses 
like gentlemen, and with a good grace. It was 
suggested that the comparative chances of Adams 
and Jackson at the approaching presidential elec- 
tion should be tested by a vote of that gathering. 
*Ah,' said Mr. Randolph, 'if the question of the 
Presidency could be settled by this assembly, 
there would be no opposition: Mr. Purdy would 
go to the White House by acclamation. 

The first heat was run in 7.37^, the second in 
7.49, and the third in 8.24. Not very fast time 
considering what has been done since; and con- 
temptible according to the pretensions made by 
race-horse owners of the present day, when " four- 
mile heats" are obsolete because they interfere 
with the business of the sport, and do not give the 




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THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 51 

bookmakers frequent enough chance to turn over 
the money of the pubhc. They base these pre- 
tensions on the performance of Lucretia Borgia, 
a four-year-old, that ran a four- mile dash in 1897, 
in California, in 7.11, carrying eighty-five pounds. 
I have no doubt that the Thoroughbreds of the 
present are much faster than those of 1823, but 
the only way to compare them as to gameness 
and bottom is to have them repeat and repeat 
again, and see whether or not this increased fleet- 
ness is maintained. Probably it will not be done, 
for the one-time sport of gentlemen is nowadays 
very much a mere gambler's game. 

The next great contest that old-time racing 
men spoke of with a respect that was akin to awe 
was that between Gray Eagle, a Kentucky horse, 
by Woodpecker out of Ophelia by Medley, and a 
Louisiana horse, Wagner, by Sir Charles out of 
Maria West by Marion, at four-mile heats. This 
was at Louisville in 1839. Wagner won the first 
two heats. Gray Eagle being badly ridden, in 
7.48 and 7.44. This race was run on a Monday. 
The following Saturday the race was repeated. 
Gray Eagle won the first heat in 7.51; Wagner 



52 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

took the second heat in 7.43. Gray Eagle broke 
down on the second mile of the third race, and no 
time was kept. Though I was not born for many 
years after these races were run, they were so im- 
portant in the history of the neighborhood where 
I lived and such frequent topics of conversation 
that I sometimes have diflficulty in persuading 
myself that I was not present. In this I some- 
what resemble the gallant King of England, who 
believed that he was at the battle of Waterloo. 

Kentucky had become prominent before this 
time as a breeding place for Thoroughbreds. The 
Kentuckians, mainly from Virginia in the early 
days, were horse lovers by inheritance and habit, 
so they took with them to their new homes very 
little but good stock. They were not impoverished 
adventurers seeking new pioneer homes because 
they had failed in the places of their birth. Not a 
bit of it. They were well born and of good sub- 
stance, and they went to this new country to 
found estates, for the gentlemen of that period 
had not outgrown the Elizabethan land hunger 
which took so many of the cavaliers to Virginia 
in an earlier century. That they took good horses 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 53 

with them was a matter of course. And arriving 
there they found that the native blue grass, which 
grew plentifully even in the woods, was past- 
urage upon which horses flourished mightily. 
The advertisements in the Kentucky Gazette from 
1787 to 1805 show that there were many Thor- 
oughbred stallions standing in the neighborhood 
of Lexington during those years, and not a few 
of them were imported from England, the others 
coming from Virginia, the noble pedigrees being 
printed at full length, with references nearly al- 
ways to the Newmarket Racing Calendar to sub- 
stantiate the turf performances of the sires adver- 
tised. So Kentucky was prepared with stock of her 
own to take the place of the Virginia horse breed- 
ers when the wasteful methods of agriculture, and 
the costly habits of hospitality, had impoverished 
the mother State and made racing a sport too ex- 
pensive for the depleted purses of the gentlemen 
who stayed at home. The Sir Archy blood was 
what the Kentuckians seem to have been after, 
and soon there was more of it in Kentucky than in 
Virginia. Some six of Sir Archy's sons stood in 
the neighborhood of Lexington at one time, and 



54 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

there were mares there fit to mate with DIomed's 
grandsons. 

The Whip family were also well represented, 
and among the other English stallions taken 
thither may be mentioned Buzzard, Royalist, 
Dragon, Speculator, Spread Eagle, Forrester, 
Alderman, Eagle, Pretender, Touchstone and 
Archer. All a reader, who wishes to go deeper, 
needs to do is to look at the stud book and see 
what pure and royal blood the Kentuckians were 
working with to make that foundation stock 
which made the State so famous, that at this time 
there are more Thoroughbreds foaled there than 
in all the other States of the Union combined. 

The breeders there were amateurs, however — 
men who bred for the love of the horse and 
the love of sport — until Mr. Robert A. Alex- 
ander began his operations at the famous Wood- 
burn farm, where the breeding of Thoroughbreds 
was more extensively carried on than in any 
other place in the world. Mr. Alexander was a 
native Kentuckian, but educated at Cambridge 
in England. He died at forty-eight, but he gave a 
great impetus to stock breeding in Kentucky. 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 55 

When I first visited Woodburn, the great Lex- 
ington was at the head of the stud. Later Mr. 
Alexander, as well as his brother and successor, 
had many other great stallions and brood mares, 
and colts and fillies from this farm for a score of 
years captured the richest prizes of the American 
turf. The history of Woodburn from 1850 to 
1880 would almost amount to the same thing as a 
history of Thoroughbred breeding in Kentucky 
for that period, though there were many other 
smaller breeders, as there are now, when the 
James B. Haggin Elmendorf farm has taken 
the premier place, and that, too, on a very 
much larger scale even than Alexander's Wood- 
burn. As it was in Alexander's time, however, 
the smaller breeders, particularly Mr. Keene and 
Mr. Belmont, are still fortunate in producing 
most admirable horses ; and it will be a bad thing 
for the Thoroughbred industry in Kentucky when 
this is no longer so. The result of a monopoly of 
breeding horses would be the same as the result 
produced by the trusts in oil, in steel and in beef; 
the industry would be controlled by one man, or 
several in combination, and the only competition 



56 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

that would remain would be between the men who 
attend to the gambling end of the game. This is 
not likely to happen, unless a corporation be 
formed to take over the chief breeding farms, for 
in nine cases out of ten, when an owner dies, his 
horses are sold and his collection dispersed so as 
to settle his estate. 

After the Gray Eagle-Wagner race, the next 
one that was watched with breathless interest by 
the whole country was the match at four-mile 
heats between Fashion and Boston for $20,000 a 
side. This was run on Long Island in 1842, and 
both heats were won by Fashion, the time being 
7.32|^ and 7.45. The time of this race, it will be 
seen, was an improvement on that of the Eclipse- 
Sir Henry race, and also on the time in the race 
between Gray Eagle and Wagner. It was called 
a match between North and South, and the North 
was again the winner. Fashion was bred in New 
Jersey, and was by Commodore Stockton's im- 
ported stallion Trustee out of the Virginia bred 
mare, Bonnets o' Blue. Boston came from Vir- 
ginia, and was by Timoleon out of Robin 
Brown's dam by Florizel. Boston was a grand- 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 57 

son of Sir Archy, and foaled in 1833. From the 
time of his training as a three-year-old until he 
met Fashion, six years later, he had campaigned 
all over the country and had meet with almost 
universal success. He was considered the greatest 
horse of his day, and there are many students of 
Thoroughbreds who to-day consider that he was 
the greatest influence for good of any horse ever 
bred in this country, greater even than his very 
wonderful son, Lexington. 

The last great race — classic races, the turf 
writers call them — prior to the Civil War, was 
at New Orleans, between two sons of Boston — 
Lexington and Lecompte. The former was out of 
Alice Carneal by imported Sarpedon, the latter 
out of Reel by imported Glencoe. This race was 
in 1854 and, of course, at four-mile-heats, for the 
Great State Post Stakes. The city of New Orleans, 
the place of the race, was packed with visitor? 
from all over the country. Lecompte won the two 
first heats, the time being 7.26 and 7.38|. Mr. 
Richard Ten Broeck, the owner of Lexington, 
was so dissatisfied that he tried to arrange a 
match with Lecompte. This came to nothing, so 



58 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

he issued a challenge to run Lexington against 
Lecompte's time, 7.26, which was the record. 
This challenge was accepted and the trial was 
made over the Metarie Course in New Orleans in 
April, 1855. The most famous jockey of the time, 
Gil Patrick, was taken from Kentucky to ride 
Mr. Ten Broeck's horse, and again the sporting 
world of the country crowded to New Orleans. 
Lexington beat the record, doing the four miles 
in 7. 19 J, and Mr. Ten Broeck was $20,000 richer 
for his belief in his horse. There was at that time, 
and is now for that matter, a feeling that a record 
made against time is not so satisfactory as one 
made in an actual race, so the friends of Lecompte 
were not cast down by Lexington's performance. 
This trial against time took place on the 2d of 
April. On the 24th of April was to be run the 
Jockey Club Purse of $1000, and both Lecompte 
and Lexington were entered. Mr. Ten Broeck 
and General Wells, the owner of Lecompte, bet 
$2500 against each other, though in the general 
betting Lexington was the favorite at $100 
to $80. A writer of the day thus describes 
the race: 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 59 

** Both animals were in the finest possible con- 
dition, and the weather and the track, had they 
been manufactured to a sportsman's order, could 
not have been improved. At last the final signal 
of 'Bring up your horses' sounded from the 
bugle; and prompt to call Gil Patrick, the well- 
known rider of Boston, put his foot in Lexing- 
ton's stirrup, and the negro boy of General Wells 
sprang into the saddle of Lecompte. They ad- 
vanced slowly and daintily forward to the stand, 
and when they halted at the score, the immense 
concourse that had, up to this moment, been 
swaying to and fro, were fixed as stone. It was a 
beautiful sight to see these superb animals stand- 
ing at the score, filled with unknown qualities of 
flight, and quietly awaiting the conclusion of the 
directions to the riders for the tap of the drum. 

"At length the tap of the drum came, and in- 
stantly it struck the stationary steeds leaped for- 
ward with a start that sent everybody's heart into 
his mouth. With bound on bound, as if life were 
staked on every spring, they flew up the quarter 
stretch, Lexington at the turn drawing his nose a 
shadow in advance, but when they reached the 



60 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

half-mile post — 53 seconds — both were exactly 
side by side. On they went at the same flying 
pace, Lexington again drawing gradually for- 
ward, first his neck, then his shoulder, and in- 
creasing up the straight side amid a wild roar of 
cheers, flew by the standard at the end of the first 
mile three-quarters of a length in the lead. One 
hundred to seventy-five on Lexington! Time, 
L491. 

"Onward they plunge; onward without pause! 
What makes this throbbing at my heart .'^ What 
are these brilliant brutes to me ? Why do I lean 
forward and insensibly unite my voice with the 
roar of this mad multitude ? Alas, I but share the 
infatuation of the horses, and the leveling spirit 
common to all strife has seized on all alike. 
Where are they now ? Ah, here they fly around 
the first turn! By Heaven! Lecompte is over- 
hauling him! 

"And so he was, for on entering the back 
stretch of the second mile the hero of 7.26 made 
his most desperate effort, reaching first the girth, 
then the shoulder, then the neck of Lexington, 
and finally, when he reached the half-mile post, 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 61 

laid himself alongside him, nose by nose. Then 
the mass, which during the few seconds of this 
special struggle had been breathless with hope 
and fear, burst into a shout that rang for 
miles, and amid the din of which might be 
heard here and there, 'One hundred even on 
Lecompte ! ' 

"But this equality was only for a moment's 
term. Lexington threw his eye jealously askant; 
Gil Patrick relaxed a little of his rein, which up to 
this time he had held close in hand, and without 
violence or startling effort, the racer of racers 
stole ahead, gently, but steadily and surely, as 
before, until he drew himself a clear length in the 
lead, in which position they closed the second 
mile. Time, 1.51. 

"Again the hurrah rises as they pass the 
stand — ' One hundred to seventy-five on Lex- 
ington ! ' — and swells in wider volume when 
Lexington increases his one length to three from 
the stand to the turn of the back stretch. In vain 
Lecompte struggled; in vain he called to mind 
his former laurels; in vain his rider struck 
him with the steel; his great spirit was a sharper 



62 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

spur, and when his tail fell, as it did from this 
time out, I could imagine he felt a sinking of the 
heart as he saw streaming before him the waving 
flag of Lexington, now held straight out in race- 
horse fashion, and anon nervously flung up as 
if it were a plume of triumph. 

'"One hundred to fifty on Lexington!* The 
three lengths were increased to four, and again 
the shout arose, as in this relative condition they 
went for the third time over the course. Time, 
1.51. 

"The last crisis of the strife had now arrived, 
and Lecompte, if he had any resources left, must 
call upon them straight. So thought his rider, for 
the steel went to his sides; but it was in vain, he 
had done his best, while, as for Lexington, it 
seemed as if he had just begun to run. Gil Patrick 
now gave him a full rein, and for a time as he 
went down the back stretch, it actually seemed 
as if he were running for the very fun of the thing. 
It was now $100 to $10 on Lexington, or any 
kind of odds, but there were no takers. He 
had the laurel in his teeth and was going for a 
distance. 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 63 

"But at this inglorious prospect Lecompte 
desperately rallied, and escaped the humiliation 
by drawing himself a few lengths within the dis- 
tance pole, while Lexington dashed past the 
stand, hard in hand, and actually running away 
with his rider — making the last mile in 1.52} 
and completing the four in the unprecedented 
time of 7.23f , I say unprecedented, because it 
beats Lecompte's 7.26, and is, therefore, the 
fastest heat ever made in a match. " 

I have taken pains to transcribe this account of 
the race for a double purpose. This race fixed 
Lexington's place as the best horse in the coun- 
try and it was also his last public appearance. 
Then, again, I think it interesting to show how the 
reporters of half a century ago dealt with an im- 
portant sporting event. After this race Lexington 
was taken back to Kentucky and covered thirty 
mares without being thrown entirely out of train- 
ing. It was Mr. Ten Broeck's intention to take 
the horse to England and race him there. Un- 
fortunately, exactly how even Mr. Ten Broeck 
never knew, the horse was over-fed just before a 
long gallop and went blind, so he never faced a 



64 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

starter after his contest with Lecompte at New 
Orleans. Mr. Ten Broeck and Mr. A. J. Alex- 
ander meeting in England, where Mr. Alexander 
had gone in search of a stallion for Woodburn, a 
bargain was struck and Lexington changed hands 
for $15,000. There never was a horse in Ken- 
tucky, or in the world for that matter, that was 
held in such esteem as was Lexington. The feel- 
ing for him was actually one of reverence. I re- 
member being taken to see him when I was a 
boy by my father. We felt and acted as though 
we were visiting a shrine. When the sightless 
veteran was brought from his box it was the most 
natural thing in the world for us to remove our 
hats. A few years before I had been taken to the 
White House to see Mr. Lincoln. Upon my word 
Lexington to me at the time seemed the greater 
and more impressive of the two. 

This best four- mile record of Lexington lasted 
for nineteen years, when one-quarter of a second 
was clipped from it at Saratoga by Fellowcraft, 
a colt by imported Australian out of Aerolite, a 
daughter of Lexington. This only lasted two 
years, when at Louisville it was beaten by Ten 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 65 

Broeck, by Mr. Ten Broeck's imported Phaeton* 
the dam being Fanny Holten by Lexington. Ten 
Broeck's time was 7.15J. Mr. Ten Broeck, by the 
way, was the first man to take American horses 
to race in England. He met with moderate suc- 
cess and thoroughly persuaded the English that 
we had first class horses in this country. His 
Prioress ran fifth for the Goodwood Cup, much 
to the chagrin of the Americans who had backed 
her heavily. Even the " Autocrat at the Breakfast 
Table " preached a charming sermon on the occa- 
sion. It was left for Mr. Pierre Lorillard and Mr, 
Keene to win classic events on the other side, the 
Derby for one, the Grand Prix and Oaks for the 
other. Lexington's great influence as a sire was 
rather through his daughters; when bred to im- 
ported English sires they were wonderfully suc- 
cessful in producing winners. The name of Lex- 
ington probably recurs more frequently than that 



* This splendid sire was not appreciated in Kentucky until after his 
death. Lexington lost his eyes through neglect, and Phaeton actually lost 
his life. So Mr. Ten Broeck had bad luck with the two best sires he ever 
owned. But Lexington's loss of his eyesight was probably America's gain, 
for it is very unlikely, if this great horse had ever gone to England, that he 
would have been suffered to return. 



66 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

of any other horse, except his own ancestors, in 
American Thoroughbred genealogies. 

During the Civil War the breeding of Thor- 
oughbreds was severely interrupted, as in Ken- 
tucky and the South generally there were sterner 
things to be done. Besides, the armies were al- 
ways looking for horses without any prejudices 
against Thoroughbreds, and the guerrilla bands 
had an absolute fondness for them. It did not 
cease, but languished. Immediately afterwards it 
started again, there being many new importa- 
tions from England, and in 1866 Jerome Park 
was opened and a new era in racing began. In 
this new era the first horse to catch the popu- 
lar affection was Harry Bassett, by Lexington out 
of Canary by imported Albion. This horse was 
the people's idol, and whenever he was to run the 
accommodations of the race-course were all too 
small to hold the crowds. As a two and three- 
year old he won all of his engagements, except the 
first, in which he started, when a blunder at the 
post took away his chances. Although bred in 
Kentucky, the Kentuckians sought a horse to 
clip his laurels, and the choice fell on old John 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 67 

Harper's Longfellow, by imported Leamington, 
dam Nantura (the dam, also, of Fanny Holton, 
Ten Broeck's dam). The two met at Long 
Branch for the Monmouth Cup, two miles and 
a half, in July, 1872. Longfellow won so easily 
that it was diJfficult to believe that Harry Bassett 
was at his best. And he was not, for two weeks 
later at Saratoga, for the Saratoga Cup, two miles 
and a quarter, Bassett won. One of Longfellow's 
plates (shoes) became twisted after he had gone 
a mile and a half, and for the remaining distance 
the horse had the entire use of only three feet. 
They never met again. In the stud Longfellow 
was a great success, and Bassett practically a 
failure. The whole country watched for intelli- 
gence of these two races, and they proved con- 
clusively that the old-time sporting blood of the 
people was as rich as it had been in the earlier 
years. 

By this time the four-mile heat races, indeed, 
any kind of heat races, were becoming unpopular 
with the managers of the turf, and both breeders 
and trainers were called upon to turn out horses 
that could go shorter distances at an increased 



68 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

rate of speed. Indeed, the English methods were 
coming more into vogue. That the votaries of the 
turf might have what they wanted, the breed- 
ers imported many new stalhons and not a few 
mares from England. The result was that what 
was needed for the new style of racing was ob- 
tained. I have often had doubts whether this 
change was a good thing either for the turf or for 
the breed of horses. The short dashes enable the 
bookmakers to bet against six races in an after- 
noon, and so largely increase the toll they levy 
on the public. The racing stables are enabled to 
contest for more purses and so increase their 
earnings. There is a greater demand for race- 
horses, so the breeders have a larger and a better 
market. But, after all, the sport of racing is only 
permitted because it tends to improve the breed 
of horses ; not race-horses alone, but because the 
Thoroughbred, when crossed with other strains 
and types, tends to improve those types. Now, 
does the blood of the new-fashioned horse assimi- 
late so well with the common blood as that of the 
more compact, and possibly sturdier, horse of 
thirty or fifty years ago.^ My opinion is that it 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 69 

does not. The modern race-horse is merely a 
racing machine, a racing machine very much as a 
Herreshoff yacht is. The contrast between this 
racing machine and a Denmark, a Morgan, or 
even an ordinary trotter is too great, and good 
results from the crossing of the strains is hardly to 
be expected; but the tendency is all towards 
greater speed for shorter journeys, and it will 
doubtless continue until the men who encourage 
and insist on the new style of racing bring racing 
under the ban of the law. Then will come the 
deluge. The racing machine horses will not be 
worth their oats, and the race-tracks will be cut 
up into building lots for surburban villas. 

Between 1870 and 1880 the coming of the 
modern type was clearly indicated, but the 
horses that were raced in that period were cer- 
tainly grand specimens. The Bonnie Scotlands 
were at this time particularly strong. Among 
these Luke Blackburn, Glidelia, and Bramble 
were probably the best. It is a pity that Bonnie 
Scotland did not have a better chance in his 
earlier career. When he arrived in America it 
was at Boston, whence he was taken to Ohio. It 



70 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

was only in 1872 that he joined the stud of the 
Belle Meade Farm in Tennessee. He lived only a 
few years later, but in 1882 the winnings of his 
get led the list. It was during this period that Mr. 
Keene sent Foxall to Europe, where he won the 
Grand Prix de Paris, was second to Bend Or for 
the City and Suburban, won the Cesarewitch 
and other great stakes. Then there were Falsetto, 
Duke of Magenta, Duke of Montrose, Aristides, 
Eolus, Grenada, Grinstead, Himyar, King- 
fisher, Monarchist, Sensation, Springbok, Tom 
Ochiltree, Uncas, Virgil, and Spendthrift, the 
latter seeming to me to best represent the vir- 
tues of the old and the new-fashioned horse than 
any other of this middle period. But Bramble 
was the most useful of them all, being up to any 
weight and ready to start every day in the week. 
The present period may be said to have begun 
at Coney Island in 1880. There have been so 
many wonderfully fast horses developed in this 
twenty-five years that even to enumerate them 
and their breeding would take a book by itself. 
The chief characteristics of the breeding, how- 
ever, may be said to be in the larger infusions of 



THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 71 

the English blood, the English having gone into 
the racing machine business before we did. I 
shall have to content myself with going along very 
rapidly now, and mention only those horses and 
events that have enduring prominence. One of 
these horses was Hindoo, by Virgil, the winner of 
many of the greatest stakes, and the sire of Han- 
over and many another star performer. Thora, by 
Longfellow, was one of the greatest fillies that 
ever looked through a bridle, and as a matron is 
one of the exceptions to the rule that hardly 
worked race-horses rarely reproduce themselves 
in their offspring. Miss Woodford, by Billet out of 
Fancy Jane, came along about this time, and was 
so splendid a racer that she was more than once 
barred in the betting as invincible. In 1884 was 
foaled Hamburg, by Hindoo out of Bourbon 
Belle. This horse outclassed all of his time, win- 
ning thirty-two races out of fifty starts, was 
thirteen times second, three times third and un- 
placed only twice. His dam was by imported Bon- 
nie Scotland. We also had Firenzi, Troubadour, 
The Bard, and Emperor of Norfolk. Among the 
most notable contests was that between Salvator 



72 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

and Tenny in 1890, over the Coney Island 
Jockey Club track. Salvator won the Suburban 
and a challenge was sent by Tenny's owner for 
$5,000 a side. Mr. Haggin, Salvator's owner, 
accepted. Murphy rode Salvator, and Garrison 
had the mount on Tenny. When the distance was 
half over it seemed Salvator's race in a gallop, 
but Tenny made up lost ground in the last half, 
and Salvator won by only half a head. The first 
mile had been run in 1.39f, while the mile and a 
quarter was covered in 2.05. Mr. Haggin, who is 
said to be the most laconic and imperturbable 
man alive, is reported to have remarked, with a 
sigh of relief when the race was finished: "Un- 
comfortably close. " After this match Salvator 
made one more distinguished appearance. This 
was at Monmouth Park, where, in a mile straight 
away, he ran against time and covered the 
distance in 1.35^. Salvator was by imported 
Prince Charlie. Salvator was not a success in the 
stud. 

In 1893 appeared another popular champion 
in Mr. Keene's Domino, a son of Himyar out of 
Mannie Gray. Domino was the perfection of 






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THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA 73 

what I have called a racing machine. He won the 
Futurity at two years old, carrying 130 pounds, 
but by a very narrow margin. As the chestnut 
colt Dobbins, by Mr. Pickwick, had carried the 
same weight and seemed to have gained on 
Domino in the last few strides, there were many, 
Dobbins' owner included, who thought Dobbins 
the better colt. So it was arranged that they 
should run a match over the Futurity course, 
each carrying 118 pounds. They ran like a match- 
ed team the whole distance, and the judges not 
being able to separate them, it was declared a 
dead heat. The heat was not run off. Domino 
made a clean sweep of his first season. The next 
year he went amiss, and was retired to the stud. 
Though he only had one or two seasons in the 
harem, he was a success, and his name will be 
perpetuated in the American Stud Book. 

The next great horse after Domino was Ham- 
burg, by Hanover out of Lady Reel by Fellow- 
craft. This was a phenomenal race-horse during a 
long career, and his get are now doing him honor 
on the turf. The colts by imported Watercress 
have been most distinguished, and one. Water- 



74 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

boy, was the star of his year. Indeed, the horses 
now winning the laurels seem to be mainly by 
imported sires, though Ben Brush and Ham- 
burg appear to be holding their own as sires. 

These rapidly sketched events I have only 
meant as illustrations of the four periods in the 
development of the English Thoroughbred in this 
country. The first period was Colonial; the sec- 
ond period was up to the Civil War; the third 
period from the end of the Civil War to 1880, and 
the fourth from 1880 till the present writing. 



CHAPTER FOUR 

THE MORGAN HORSE 

The Morgan horse is the most distinctive repro- 
ducing native type in America, and has been so 
since the family was recognized as a type in Ver- 
mont some seventy-five years ago. For symmetry, 
docihty, intelHgence, sturdiness, and speed, the 
Morgans have been justly famous and have met 
with the approval of good judges of horse-flesh 
during the whole of their history. They reached 
their highest fame during the two decades between 
1850 and 1870. After that, both as a type and as a 
family, they came near perishing, a victim to the 
desire, which merits the name of craze, to produce 
trotting horses of phenomenal speed by means of 
crossing and recrossing with the Hambletonian 
blood. That there is a revival of Morgan breed- 
ing is an excellent thing for the country, for the 
Morgan is about the best all-round, everyday, 

75 



76 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

general utility horse that this country has had 
and probably as good as any type in the world. 
The renascence of the Morgan horse is due to 
the horse shows, which have become deservedly 
popular in many parts of the United States. There 
are those who speak of the horse shows rather 
contemptuously as society fads in which the 
horses exhibited are of secondary importance and 
interest. To many, who care nothing about 
horses and knoW less, it is doubtless true that the 
social side of horse shows is the important, if not 
the only side. This attitude, even if it be the atti- 
tude of the majority of those who attend the ex- 
hibitions, does not detract from the value of the 
shows so long as the work in the ring be of the 
right sort, and high standards be established and 
maintained as to the various classes of horses that 
are produced in this country. Indeed, it is a good 
thing for the shows that people with no fondness 
for or taste in horses should still patronize them, 
for their money helps pay expenses and makes it 
possible to offer the handsome prizes which go 
along with the awards. If the horse shows had 
done nothing else than stimulate the renewed 



THE MORGAN HORSE 77 

effort to re-establish the Morgan type they would 
have served a purpose far from vain. 

Twenty years or so ago, when the horse shows 
began to take the place of the old-time county 
fairs, the driving horse that was popular in the 
United States was the Standard Bred Trotter, 
which usually traced back to Messenger through 
Hambletonian, who has been celebrated with 
such insistence of praise as the great begettor of 
trotters that the majority of Americans believe 
all that has been said of him as the actual and in- 
disputable truth. It is not a grateful task to de- 
stroy established and well-liked fictions, so for 
the moment I shall pass the Hambletonian fiction 
by, and devote myself to telling about horses of 
superior breeding, better manners, higher cour- 
age, greater symmetry and above all, a prepo- 
tency of blood which reproduces itself in off- 
spring from generation to generation, so that we 
have in the Morgans an easily recognized and 
most valuable type. Before going on with my 
story, however, I must disavow any intention to 
detract from the merits of those who have bred 
and trained the wonderful trotters that have, 



78 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

year by year, been clipping seconds off the mile 
record until the two minute mark has been 
passed. At the same time I wish to insist that the 
breeding and training of these phenomenal ani- 
mals should be left to the very rich, just, for in- 
stance, as yacht racing is. The breeding of trot- 
ters is far from an exact science, as the trotter, as 
such, is not a reproducing type, and only two or 
three in a hundred of the standard breds ever go 
very fast, while more of the fast horses among 
them pace than trot. They are not a type in con- 
formation, in action or in gait; they come in all 
sizes and all shapes, and are not to be judged by 
the two or three per cent that develop speed. 
Moreover, they do not pay. Counting the cost of 
the ninety-seven or ninety-eight per cent of fail- 
ures, I venture to say that the production of each 
successful trotter must cost in the neighborhood 
of ten thousand dollars. Lottery prizes, when lot- 
teries were in vogue, were as high as that; but 
buying lottery tickets was never considered a 
good commercial enterprise. I sincerely hope, 
however, that rich men will continue to breed for 
extreme speed, as they can afford such costly and 



THE MORGAN HORSE 79 

interesting experiments. The breeder, however, 
who wishes to make his stock farm pay, and the 
ordinary farmer who raises a few colts annually 
will surely find a more profitable business in try- 
ing to secure high-grade Morgans than in pursu- 
ing the elusive course which frequently leads to 
bankruptcy by the well-known Hambletonian 
road. 

The founder of the Morgan type was a horse 
born somewhere about 1789, and was the prop- 
erty of Justin Morgan, who kept a tavern in West 
Springfield, Massachusetts, until he moved to 
Randolph, Vermont, in the year the colt that has 
perpetuated his owner's name was foaled. I have 
examined all the testimony available as to the 
pedigree of this first Morgan horse, and I must 
say with regret, but with entire respect for those 
who have gathered the evidence, that none of it 
seems to me quite convincing. This was the con- 
clusion of Mr. D. C. Linsley, who published a 
valuable book in 1857, called " Morgan Horses." 
Mr. Linsley in his book printed all the stories and 
traditions about the breeding of the Justin Mor- 
gan with candid impartiality, but he did not de- 



80 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

cide that any was correct. According to these sto- 
ries the first Morgan was anything from a Thor- 
oughbred to a Canadian pony. Recently Col. 
Joseph Battell, of Middlebury, Vermont, himself 
a breeder of Morgans and the editor and pub- 
lisher of the " Morgan Horse and Register," has 
re-examined all the records extant as to the owner 
of the first Morgan horse, and he announces, with 
a thorough belief in his conclusions, that the 
horse was a Thoroughbred, got by Colonel De 
Lancey's True Briton (also called Beautiful Bay 
and Traveler) out of a daughter of Diamond, 
also a Thoroughbred. According to the Battell 
pedigree, Justin Morgan had many infusions of 
the blood of the Godolphin Barb, the Darley 
Arabian, and the Byerly Turk, and was worthy 
to be registered in the stud book established by 
the Messrs. Weatherby, in England. Indeed, 
Colonel Battell personally told me that he thor- 
oughly believed in the accuracy of this pedigree, 
adding, however, "that while the evidence is 
strong enough to transfer property on, it would 
not hang a man." 

As I said before, none of the evidence seems 



THE MORGAN HORSE 81 

quite convincing to me. And no wonder. This 
horse died in Vermont in 1820, and not until 
nearly thirty years after was there any systematic 
effort made to trace his pedigree. During his life 
he was known only in his own neighborhood 
where, notwithstanding his acknowledged value 
as a stallion, he was used the greater part of 
every year as a common work horse. My own be- 
lief is that this horse was very rich in Arab and 
Barb blood, but not an English Thoroughbred. 
He had, so far as his history has been told, none 
of the Thoroughbred characteristics. Nor had his 
descendants. But whence his ancestors came and 
where he was born or when are not matters of so 
much importance as the indisputable fact that 
his progeny now for a hundred years have had 
similar excellent characteristics and have re- 
mained a fixed type, through good and evil re- 
pute, so that we know by what we can see to-day 
that the old stories and songs of our grandfathers 
as to the strength, the speed, the beauty and the 
courage of Morgan horses were more than mere 
songs and stories — they were the truth put into 
pleasing form. 



82 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

This founder of the type, when the property of 
Justin Morgan, who, after he gave up tavern 
keeping in Massachusetts, became a school- 
teacher, a drawing and music master in Ver- 
mont, was called Figure. When the produce of 
his sons began achieving fame, and the family and 
type needed a distinctive name, he was called 
after his old owner (maybe his breeder, for all 
that I can say to the contrary), Justin Morgan. 
His most famous son was Sherman Morgan, 
though there were eight or ten others of his colts 
kept entire, and the progeny of them have found 
place in the Morgan Register. Mr. Linsley's de- 
scription of the first Morgan is worthy of tran- 
scription : 

"The original, or Justin Morgan, was about 
14 hands high and weighed about 950 pounds. 
His color was dark bay, with black legs, mane 
and tail. His mane and tail were coarse and 
heavy, but not so massive as has sometimes been 
described; the hair of both was straight and not 
inclined to curl. His head was good, not extreme- 
ly small, but lean and bony, the face straight, 
forehead broad, ears small and very fine, but set 



THE MORGAN HORSE 83 

very wide apart. His eyes were medium size, very 
dark and prominent, with a spirited but pleasant 
expression, and showed no white round the edge 
of the lid. His nostrils were very large, the muz- 
zle small and the lips close and firm. His back 
and legs were perhaps his most noticeable point. 
The former was very short, the shoulder blades 
and hip bones being very long and oblique, and 
the loins extremely long and muscular. His body 
was rather round, long and deep, close ribbed up ; 
chest deep and wide, with the breast bone pro- 
jecting a good deal in front. His legs were short, 
close jointed, thin, but very wide, hard and free 
from meat, with muscles that were remarkably 
large for a horse of his size, and this superabun- 
dance of muscle exhibited itself at every step. His 
hair was short and at almost all seasons soft and 
glossy. He had a little long hair about the fetlocks 
and for two or three inches above the fetlocks on 
the back sides of the legs; the rest of the limbs 
were entirely free from it. His feet were small but 
well shaped, and he was in every respect per- 
fectly sound and free from every sort of blemish. 
He was a very fast walker. In trotting his gait 



84 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

was low and smooth, and his step short and ner- 
vous; he was not what in these days (1857) 
would be called fast, and we think it doubtful if 
he could trot a mile much, if any, within four 
minutes, though it is claimed by many that he 
could trot it in three." 

So we see that the founder of this great type 
was, whatever his breeding, a pony of most ad- 
mirable conformation. In his performances he 
was the most remarkable horse in the neighbor- 
hood of his owner. He won against all comers in 
the various contests that were indulged in by the 
somewhat primitive sportsmen of the Green 
Mountain State. He won at walking, trotting, 
and running and also at pulling. Besides he was 
in great demand on muster day as the mount of 
the commanding officer, who would make a great 
show on this elegant, graceful, and intelligent 
horse. So we see the founder was exactly what the 
Morgans have been and are to-day, a good all- 
round, general utility horse. And his progeny 
have been like him. Many of them, however, 
have been much larger and much faster as trot- 
ters, and, as we shall presently see, a breeder of 




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THE MORGAN HORSE 85 

Morgans stands as much chance to produce a 
very fast trotter as he who breeds with speed 
alone as his ultimate object. 

Justin Morgan was in the stud for more than 
twenty years in Vermont, and became the father 
of many sons and daughters. How many sons 
were kept entire is not known. Mr. Linsley men- 
tions only six, but Colonel Battell accounts for 
twelve or fourteen on "information more or less 
reliable." Of the daughters we have very little di- 
rect information, but that there were many and 
that they had a great influence on the stock of 
New England, and particularly of Vermont, is in- 
evitable. The records of most of the sons as sires 
have not been kept with either fullness or cer- 
tainty, and the evidence is usually speculative 
rather than exact. This as a rule; sometimes, 
however, it is exact. This is the case with some of 
the progeny of Sherman Morgan, Bulrush and 
Woodbury Morgan. As to the others — Brutus, 
Weasel or Fenton Horse, Young Traveler or 
Hawkins Horse, Revenge, the Gordon Horse, 
the Randolph Horse, and one or two that went to 
the neighborhood of Boston — the records are 



86 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

not satisfactory. For instance, here is the kind of 
story that was once current. Revenge was in the 
stud at Surrey, New Hampshire, in 1823. The 
dam of the famous Henry Clay by Andrew Jack- 
son was the noted mare Lady Surrey, foaled 
about 1824. She was said by some to be sired by 
Revenge. Mr. Randolph Huntington, the histor- 
ian of the Clay family of horses and the staunch- 
est advocate of their merits, does not endorse this, 
as he says that Lady Surrey was a Kanuck, and 
brought to New York with twelve other horses 
from the neighborhood of Quebec. Had she been 
the granddaughter of the original Morgan, the 
fact would hardly have escaped Mr. Huntington, 
who has also always been a believer in the Mor- 
gan blood. But there is very little profit in dis- 
cussing or analyzing these old stories. There is no 
mortal way of getting at the truth, and we can do 
little more than grant that many of them are not 
impossible. What is important is that in the 
course of three horse generations the Morgan 
was a fixed and reproducing type in Vermont, a 
type which had attracted the attention of breed- 
ers and horsemen all over the country to such an 



THE MORGAN HORSE 87 

extent that commissioners were sent, even from 
Kentucky, to examine and report upon the stock. 
Sherman Morgan was foaled in 1808, his dam 
being a Rhode Island mare taken to Vermont in 
1799. Of her pedigree nothing is certainly 
known, but Mr. Sherman, her owner, spoke of 
her as of Spanish breed, which means that she 
was, in all probability, a Barb. Her high quality, 
docility, speed, spirit and stamina have been tes- 
tified to in unusually trustworthy fashion. She 
was taller than Justin Morgan, but her colt, 
Sherman Morgan, was not so tall even as his sire, 
being only 13f hands high, and weighing only 
925 pounds. He was worked hard as a young 
horse on a farm, and for many years also driven 
in a stage from Lyndon, Vermont, to Portland, 
Maine. His team mate was another son of Justin 
Morgan, and the "little team" was famous at 
every inn between the two ends of the route. In 
that section Sherman Morgan was the champion 
runner in the matches at short distances then fre- 
quent in the locality. This horse was also known 
for a time as "Lord North," but there was no ef- 
fort to disguise the facts as to his correct lineage. 



88 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

The change of name indicates that in 1823 the 
true value of the horse as a sire was not fully rec- 
ognized. He died in 1835, some twenty of his sons 
being kept entire. As in the case of Justin Mor- 
gan we have no records of the females that 
sprung from Sherman Morgan. His sons aver- 
aged 14f hands, the average weight being 1020 
pounds. Here was distinct improvement in the 
third generation, and clear evidence also of the 
prepotency of the blood, together with the value in 
breeding of the Arab blood when transplanted. 

Sherman Morgan's most famous son was Black 
Hawk, foaled in 1833, his dam being a large black 
mare of unknown breeding, but fast and superior 
in quality. Those who had owned the mare said 
that she was from New Brunswick or Nova Sco- 
tia and of English stock. The pedigree manufac- 
turers — Wallace, particularly — insist that she 
was a Narragansett pacer, with the evident idea of 
bolstering up their contention that all fast trotters 
owe their capacity to trot to the pacing capacity 
of their ancestors. As not two per cent of Mor- 
gans ever pace, including the descendants of 
Black Hawk, this contention is preposterous, to 



THE MORGAN HORSE 89 

say the least. Black Hawk's son, Ethan Allen, was 
a magnificent roadster, and his great speed in 
trotting matches did harm, I think, to the perpetu- 
ation of the Morgan type, for the Morgan breed- 
ers began making efforts to get fast trotters rather 
than to preserve the type, with the result that 
there was, in the course of twenty or thirty years, a 
distinct falling off in the interest that was felt in 
these very superior horses. Ethan Allen was foaled 
in 1849 at Ticonderoga, New York, and his dam 
was said to be an inbred Morgan. The colt cer- 
tainly had all the Morgan characteristics, and 
was the fastest stallion of his day, trotting three 
heats with a running mate when he was eighteen 
years old in 2.15, 2.16, and 2.19. He was also 
the most popular public performer of his day; 
and at that time trotting was more attractive to 
the people in America than running. *'No one 
has ever raised a doubt as to Ethan Allen being 
the handsomest, finest-styled and most perfectly- 
gaited trotter than had ever been produced," was 
said by the "American Cultivator," in 1873. He 
was a bright bay, a trifle less than 15 hands, and 
weighed 1000 pounds. He was the sire of a great 



90 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

many colts and fillies, but being kept in training 
the better part of his life he never had so good a 
chance as some other horses to become famous as 
an ancestor. Through his sons, Honest Allen and 
Daniel Lambert, his name and that of his sire 
have been kept very much alive in the records, 
for his descendants have been fleet in the track 
and most successful in the show ring. His daugh- 
ters and granddaughters have also done him 
proud, proving the excellence of the Morgan 
blood as brood mares. It is only when we get to 
his generation that the chroniclers take much no- 
tice of the importance of the females in perpetu- 
ating the Morgan type and family. Honest Allen 
spent the last ten years of his life at Lexington, 
Kentucky, and he was mated with many of the 
best mares in that section, his son. Denning Al- 
len, out of Reta, a granddaughter of Black Hawk, 
proving himself one of the best speed producing 
sires the country has had, one of his colts. Lord 
Clinton, being marvelously fast and courageous. 
Woodbury Morgan was the largest of the stal- 
lion sons of the original Morgan. He was 14f 
hands, and usually weighed about 1000 pounds. 



THE MORGAN HORSE 91 

He was m the stud in Vermont for twenty years, 
and at twenty-two was taken to Alabama, where 
he died from an injury received in disembarking 
from the ship that carried him. His sons and 
daughters in New England helped materially to 
increase the fame of the type, as they were larger 
than the other branches of the family, and had in 
a great degree the characteristic virtues — fear- 
lessness, elegance, speed, stamina, and docility. 
Three of his sons — Gifford Morgan, Morgan 
Eagle, and Morgan Caesar — became famous 
sires, their sons, grandsons and great-grandsons 
being reckoned among the best horses in Amer- 
ica. One of the grandsons of Gifford Morgan was 
Vermont Morgan, the sire of Golddust, a horse 
which established one of the most noted and val- 
uable families of the Morgan strain. Golddust 
was foaled in Kentucky in 1855, and was at his 
best during the Civil War, his opportunities being 
very much curtailed by the unsettled and dis- 
tressing social conditions which prevailed in the 
neighborhood whei« he was owned. But he was a 
wonderful horse, and having received through 
his dam another fresh infusion of Arabian blood, 



92 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

his sons and his daughters were rich in that 
potent quahty, without which no equine family or 
type has ever, in the last few centuries at least, 
been valuable or permanent. Golddust's dam was 
by Zilcaadi, an Arabian horse given to United 
States Consul Rhind by the Sultan of Turkey. 
The Golddusts were speedy horses, but speed 
was not their chief virtue. If Mr. Dorsey, of Ken- 
tucky, had not been handicapped by the preva- 
lent prejudice held by the purchasers of roadsters 
against any other than Hambletc Jans as fast 
trotters, he would have been able to perfect a bet- 
ter type of carriage horses than we have in this 
country, and have got, also, many very fast trot- 
ters. Golddust did get fast trotters, but his bent 
was certainly in another direction which was not 
followed. He was 16 hands high, and weighed 
1250 pounds. He was a bright gold in color — 
hence his name — and the perfection of sym- 
metry, while his action left nothing to be desired. 
The third of the sons of Justin Morgan to es- 
tablish a distinct Morgan family was Bulrush 
Morgan foaled in 1812, and living to the great 
age of thirty-six years. The breeding of the dam 



THE MORGAN HORSE 93 

of Bulrush Morgan is not known, but she is said 
to have been a French mare, which I take to 
mean that she was brought into Vermont from 
French Canada. This horse left a great many de- 
scendants, and they were all singularly alike, 
generally being deep bays and browns with dark 
points and a general freedom from any marks, 
such as white feet or white spots in the face. They 
were noted also for the absence of spavins and 
ring bones. They were fast, good all-round horses 
— good on the road and in the field, in harness 
and under the saddle. They did not particularly 
attract the attention of trotting horse people until 
Bulrush Morgan's great-grandson, Morrill, be- 
gan a family of many branches — the Winthrop 
Morrills, the Fearnaughts, and the Dracos -- all 
of much distinction in that field where fast mile 
records are considered the highest test of merit. 
Suppose that we were to concede that phenom- 
enal speed was the one test of merit for a driving 
horse and then examine the records. We should 
find that the majority of the really phenomenal 
trotters from Ethan Allen's time till now had in 
their breeding rich infusions of Morgan blood. 



94 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

As I have said before, Ethan Allen, with no other 
than Morgan blood that we can account for, was 
the fastest stallion of his time, and the most popu- 
lar performer on the trotting tracks, even eclips- 
ing the famous Flora Temple in his ability to ex- 
cite the enthusiasm of sportsmen by the even- 
ness of his work, the smoothness of his gait, his 
endurance and courage, and that intelligent docil- 
ity which made him seem to know in every emerg- 
ency exactly what he was called on to do. In his 
great race in 1867, at the Fashion Course on Long 
Island, when, with a running mate, he met the 
fleet Dexter, who had taken from Flora Temple 
her long-maintained fastest record, we are told 
that forty thousand people had assembled to wit- 
ness the contest, and the betting was 2 to 1 in fa- 
vor of Dexter. In Wallace's "Monthly" of ten 
years later, there was a description of the race 
that I venture to reproduce: 

" When the horses appeared upon the track to 
warm up for the race. Dexter, driven by the ac- 
complished reinsman, Budd Doble, was greeted 
with a shout of applause. Soon the team ap- 
peared, and behind sat the great master of trot- 



THE MORGAN HORSE 95 

ting tactics, Dan Mace. His face, which has often 
been a mask to thousands, had no mask over it on 
this occasion. It spoke only that intense earnest- 
ness that indicates the near approach of a supreme 
moment. The team was hitched to a Hght skele- 
ton wagon; Ethan wore breeching, and beside 
him was a great, strong race-horse, fit to run for a 
man's life. His traces were long enough to fully 
extend himself, but they were so much shorter 
than Ethan's that he had to take the weight. Dex- 
ter drew the inside, and on the first trial they got 
the 'send-off,' without either one having six 
inches advantage. When they got the word the 
flight of speed was absolutely terrific, so far be- 
yond anything I had witnessed in a trotting horse 
that I felt the hair raising on my head. The run- 
ning horse was next to me, and notwithstanding 
my elevation in the grand stand, Ethan was 
stretched out so near the ground that I could see 
nothing of him but his ears. I fully believe that 
for several rods at this point they were going a 
two-minute gait. 

*' It was impossible that this terrible pace could 
be maintained long, and just before reaching the 



96 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

first turn, Dexter's head began to swim, and the 
team passed him and took the track, reaching the 
first quarter pole in 32 seconds, with Dexter 
three or four lengths behind. The same lightning 
speed was kept up during the second quarter, 
reaching the half-mile pole in 1.04, with Dexter 
further in the rear. Mace then took a pull on his 
team and came home a winner by six or eight 
lengths in 2.15. When this time was put on the 
blackboard the response of the multitude was 
like the roar of old ocean." 

The team also won the next two heats in 2.16 
and 2.19, and Wallace is of opinion that the team 
might have won the first heat in 2.12 had it been 
necessary. This enthusiastic description of Ethan 
Allen's performance was written before Wallace 
"took a brief" for the Hambletonians. Then he 
belittled the Morgans in every way, and when re- 
minded of his previous admiration of Ethan Al- 
len, expressed a doubt of his Morgan ancestry. 
But the Morgans have kept on going fast, when it 
has happened to be their nature so to do, and that 
really is as much as can be said of any horses. 
The dams of the following remarkable perform- 



THE MORGAN HORSE 97 

ers were of Morgan breeding : — Jo Patchen, 
Dan Patch, Sweet Marie, Major Delmar, and 
Lou Dillon, while the only trotting inheritance of 
Rarus, Fearnaught, and Lord Clinton was from 
Morgan forebears. The Morgans can go fast 
enough. There is no doubt about that. But that is 
not their chief value or their highest merit. Prob- 
ably not a much greater percentage of Morgans 
would go phenomenally fast than of Standard 
Bred Trotters with no Morgan strain, though such 
a proposition has not been proved ; but the Mor- 
gans are what the Standard Bred Trotters are 
not — the Morgans are of a definite reproducing 
type, and whether they trot in 3.30, 2.30, or 2.00 
minutes, they have their typical excellences to 
recommend them and to give them a value, 
which no other horse type in America can ap- 
proach, because they are the best, most symmet- 
rical, most elegant and most docile harness horses 
in the world, with a stamina and a courage that 
none but Thoroughbreds approach. 

So much importance has been attached to this 
matter of speed with track records, that I felt 
obliged to dwell on it somewhat in my discussion 



98 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

of the Morgans. It is really, however, much more 
interesting than important. The important thing 
is to get a breed of horses ninety per cent of which 
can go with reasonable speed, showing a clean, 
square trot and graceful high action, and when at 
top speed be free of clicking or forging or inter- 
fering, performing in this manner, moreover, 
without boots or hobbles and without effort, and 
also without tiring even when the road is long. 
And in the Morgans we have such a type. That 
there should ever have been any danger that they 
might have perished through neglect is a curious 
chapter in the history of this country. It does not 
properly belong in this place, but to that other 
chapter which relates to the chicanery, the delu- 
sions and absolute forgeries which are so inter- 
woven with the history of the Standard Bred 
trotter that good men believe in them though 
they have been pointed out again and again with 
elaborate detail and circumstance. 

The Morgans are being bred in many parts of 
the country, more of them being in the Middle 
and far West, probably, than in Vermont and the 
rest of New England. Their blood is closely 



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98 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

of the Morgans. It is really, howrrer. much more 



interesting than important. T' 


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icanery, the delu- 

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THE MORGAN HORSE 99 

blended with many of the famihes of the Ken- 
tucky saddle-horses, and goes far in giving finish 
to that remarkable type, which now furnishes 
mounts for the great army of American park rid- 
ers, while pretty nearly all the show winners in 
the saddle classes come from two or three coun- 
ties of the beautiful Blue Grass State. The adapt- 
ability of the Morgan blood to other crosses is a 
strong argument in favor of its Arab origin. That 
its prepotency has continued so long is another 
argument in favor of the theory that there was 
other Arab blood brought by the female lines. 
These speculations and surmises we cannot 
prove, but as there is now a register we can know 
about the latter generations, the good qualities of 
which will, no doubt, show us that we were for- 
tunate in saving this invaluable type before it was 
too late and madness had done its final work of 
extermination. hnpf* 



CHAPTER FIVE 

MESSENGER AND THE EARLY TROTTERS 

One of the most important events in the early 
horse history of this country was the landing from 
England in 1788 of the Thoroughbred stallion 
Messenger, a gray horse that had had some suc- 
cess on the turf in the old world, but was scarcely 
what might be called great as a race-horse. He 
was brought over here to be the sire of runners, 
and he was, to an extent, as both his sons and 
daughters were good performers. His greatest 
place in the Thoroughbred records is due to the 
fact that he was the sire of Miller's Damsel, the 
dam of American Eclipse, the horse that upheld 
the honor of the North in the great contest when 
Sir Henry represented the South. But before 
Messenger's death it had been recognized that 
when he was bred with the mares of the American 
basic stock, the produce had a disposition and a 

100 



MESSENGER AND EARLY TROTTERS 101 

capacity to trot faster than was then at all usual. 
Naturally, therefore, he was used to further this 
end as much as to sire runners, though there was 
nothing like a trotting turf in those days, the con- 
tests being on the roads under saddle and for con- 
siderable distances. 

Messenger's sire was Mambrino, by Engi- 
neer; Engineer was by Sampson, and Sampson by 
Blaze ; Blaze by Flying Childers (pronounced by 
Major Upton in his " Newmarket and Arabia," 
*'the best horse to be found in the stud book"); 
and Flying Childers by the Darley Arabian. This 
is pretty good breeding, as any one will say who is 
familiar with the early English records as kept 
by the Messrs. Weatherby. But even Messenger's 
title to be a Thoroughbred has been bitterly dis- 
puted by the controversialists of recent time, this 
controversy having been precipitated and intensi- 
fied when, in the effort to get faster trotters, it 
was proposed to put in more Thoroughbred blood. 
The leader of the opposition to more Thorough- 
bred blood was an able and ingenious writer who 
has never had his equal in manufacturing pedi- 
grees to suit his own theories, and at the same 



102 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

time please the interests of those who hired him to 
bolster up the merits of the stock they were breed- 
ing to sell. He maintained that the dam of Samp- 
son, the grandsire of Messenger, was a pacing 
mare, and hence Messenger's capacity to trans- 
mit the trot to his progeny. He further affirmed 
that the trot and the pace were the same gait ; but 
of this I will speak later when I get to the Stand- 
ard Bred Trotters. Now, as a matter of fact, the 
Godolphin progenitor of Messenger through the 
female line was a Barb, and Barbs are apt to 
pace, though if Thoroughbreds pace I have yet to 
see one. 

So many fictions have grown up about Mes- 
senger that he seems more like a hero of ro- 
mance than a flea-bitten gray horse of not very 
fine finish, and worth, according to the records of 
sales, in the neighborhood of $4500. Indeed, the 
record of his landing is so obscure that I have 
not been able to determine whether it was in New 
York or Philadelphia. But he was in the stud for 
nineteen years and left many sons and daughters. 
He was kept in various places — near Phila- 
delphia, on Long Island, in Orange County, New 



MESSENGER AND EARLY TROTTERS 103 

York, and in New Jersey. But in each neighbor- 
hood he made an impression on the horses that 
came after him, an influence which seems to have 
been both good and enduring. 

Trotting and pacing racing in America had 
been popular even before Messenger's coming, 
and long before his get and their get appeared on 
the road. But the matches were neighborhood 
affairs and attracted only local attention. There 
was absolutely no effort at organization and the 
construction of trotting tracks until many years 
later. What racing there was was in the hands 
and under the control of gentlemen ; how much 
interest they took in these trotting and pacing 
matches I do not know. But not much I fancy, 
for caste in America was stronger and more 
separating than it is now, when, if we put the 
*' mighty rich" in a class by themselves there is 
very little at all. It was not until between 1820 
and 1830 that horses were trotted on tracks, and 
then there was little, if any, of this mile heat 
business to see really how fast a horse could go for 
a short distance. What the people of that elder 
day seemed to be most interested in was how far 



104 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

a horse could trot at a good rate of speed. I will 
not tire my readers with a recital of the fictions of 
the contests on the roads of Long Island and 
Harlem, but begin with the race of Lady Kate 
under the saddle against time. Her task was to go 
fifteen miles in an hour. This she did and easily. 
Nor does it seem much of a task when we con- 
sider that a few years later Andrew Jackson was 
doing mile after mile in much less than three 
minutes. This horse, by the way, was so superior 
to the trotters of the time that his owner could 
make few matches with him. His speed and en- 
durance frightened the others off, and there was 
little, if any, rivalry. We find it recorded, how- 
ever, that Paul Pry, in 1833, beat time in an effort 
to go sixteen miles to the hour, and Hiram Wood- 
ruff, then a boy, expressed the opinion that this 
horse could then have gone twenty miles in the 
hour. This same old driver tells of a horse which 
he thought was one of the most superior he ever 
knew, Top Gallant, by Messenger. This fellow, 
in his twenty-second year, went four four-mile 
heats in time very fast for that day. A little later 
appeared Dutchman, who, in a race of three-mile 



MESSENGER AND EARLY TROTTERS 105 

heats against Rattler, went the distance in 7.45 J, 
7.50, 8.02 and 8.24, Dutchman won the first and 
fourth heat, Rattler won the second heat, while 
the third was a dead heat. Here we see the first 
heat was trotted at the rate of 2.35, which was 
surely very fast going, considering the distance, 
the vehicles used and the shoeing. But such 
journeys are now considered too far. 

Lady Suffolk, an inbred Messenger, was 
spoken of for a while as the Queen of Trotters, 
and she was a remarkably good one both in 
breeding and in performance. She was sired by 
Engineer II, by Engineer, a son of imported Mes- 
senger; her dam was by Don Quixote, son of 
Messenger. So it will be seen that she was closely 
inbred to Messenger and had as much of the Thor- 
oughbred blood as any trotting horse of remark- 
able performance. She was a gray, and was foal- 
ed in 1833 on Long Island. She began trotting 
when she was five years old, and had a remark- 
ably successful career. She trotted 138 races, 
winning eighty-eight times and receiving forfeit 
three times. When she was twelve years old, at 
Beacon Course, Hoboken, she trotted the second 



106 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

heat of a five-heat race in 2. 29 J, which was the 
first time 2.30 had been passed, and was, of 
course, the record. In 1849 she made a saddle 
record of 2.26. She was bred to Black Hawk in 
Vermont, but the colt was prematurely born, and 
she left no descendants. Although this record was 
reduced in 1849 to 2.28 by Pelham, a converted 
pacer, another second was knocked off in 1853 by 
Highland Maid, also a converted pacer, there 
was nothing in the way of trotters to take the 
great place of Lady Suffolk until Flora Temple, 
the queen of them all, came along about 1850, and 
proceeded to beat all that attempted to rival her 
for speed and courage. 

When I was a boy. Flora Temple was consid- 
ered almost as great as Lexington. In Kentucky 
at that time, her wonderful performances, her 
speed and her courage were considered all the 
more remarkable from the fact that no one knew 
how she was bred, and inferred that she had no 
breeding that was good. This was not a fair in- 
ference. Her appearance, her gameness, her 
fighting qualities, together with her nervousness, 
all indicated that she was a high-bred animal. To 



MESSENGER AND EARLY TROTTERS 107 

say what that breeding was is another matter. So 
a pedigree was fixed up for her. On the plate pub- 
hshed by Currier and Ives when she was at the 
very zenith of her fame, her pedigree was set 
down as follows : " Sired by one-eyed Kentucky 
Hunter, by Kentucky Hunter; dam Madam 
Temple by a spotted Arabian horse." I have no 
doubt that this pedigree is as arrant nonsense as 
was ever put in print, and was simply made up to 
put on the advertisements of the races in which 
she was entered. I doubt, even, whether there was 
any serious effort to trace her pedigree when she 
was a filly, for it was not until she was five years 
old that she attracted the attention of a horseman 
and he bought her for $175, and sold her quickly 
for $350. Previous to that she had been used in a 
livery stable, though I recall a tradition that she 
had been used in a milk cart. 

Colonel Battell, who spares no pains when he 
goes after a pedigree, investigated that of Flora 
Temple, and says it is as follows: "Foaled May, 
1845; bred by Samuel Welch, Sangerfield, New 
York; got by Loomis's Bogus, son of Lame 
Bogus, by Ellis's Bogus, son ot imported Tom 



108 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

Bogus; dam Madam Temple, about 850 pounds, 
bay, foaled 1840, bred by Elijah Peck, Water- 
ville. New York, sold when four months old to 
William Johnson, of whom she was purchased, 
1843, by Samuel Welch, got by a spotted stallion 
(owned by Horace Terry, who brought him from 
Long Island or Dutchess County, New York) 
said to be by a full-blooded Arabian stallion kept 
on Long Island ; second dam described by John I. 
Peck, son of Elijah Peck, as bay with black 
points, bob tail, low set and heavy, very smart 
and would weigh from 1050 to 1175 pounds, 
foaled about 1834, purchased by Mr. Peck of a 
Mr. Randall, Paris, New York. Sold when wean- 
ing with her dam to Archie Hughes, Sangerfield, 
who sold her for $13 to Nathan Tracy of Hamil- 
ton, New York, who kept her two and one-half 
years, and sold to William H. Condon, Smyrna, 
New York, who sold to Kelley & Richardson, 
livery-stable keepers, Richardson, New York. 
Mr. Richardson took her with a drove of cattle to 
Washington Hollow, New York, and sold her for 
$175 to Jno. Vielee, who took her to New York 
and sold her to George E. Perrin, for $550, who 



MESSENGER AND EARLY TROTTERS 109 

sold her September, 1850, to G. A. Vogel, for 
$600. A correspondent of the Spirit of the Times. 
writing from Waterville, Oneida County, New 
York, February, 1860, says: "Madam Temple, 
the dam of Flora, was foaled the property of Eli- 
jah Peck, Waterville, Oneida County, New York, 
in the spring of 1840 : her dam was a small but 
fleet bay mare. Madam Temple was sired by a 
spotted Arabian stallion brought from Dutchess 
County, and owned by Horace Terry. Mr. Peck 
disposed of Madam Temple when four months 
old for a mere trifle to William Johnson of the 
same place. . . . Terry's spotted Arabian 
was a remarkably strong, restless, fast-trotting 
horse, said to have been sired by a full-blooded 
Arabian stallion on Long Island. He was a great 
favorite in this section, and his stock for general 
use possesses probably more excellent qualities 
than that of any other horse known in this vicin- 
ity. They were uniformly strong, with rare speed 
and bottom. The general high reputation in 
which his stock was held may be judged from the 
fact that George W. Crowningshield, of Bos- 
ton, owned a pacing gray mare of his get, so 



110 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

fast and enduring that he sold her for $1500. 
That was considered very high in those days. 
Madam Temple has always been regarded as a 
remarkable roadster. Mr. Hughes sold her in 
1846 to G. B. Cleveland, Waterville, who soon 
parted with her to N. W. Moss of the same 
place, but now of Osage, Iowa. By him she was 
kept as a horse of all work for several years, from 
whom she was purchased by James M. Tower in 
the spring of 1854, and he subsequently sold to 
H. L. Barker, of Clinton, Oneida County, New 
York, in January, 1855, who now owns her. 
Flora was her first colt. Her second a horse colt, 
was foaled in the spring of 1855, and was bought 
by J. W. Taylor, of East Bloomfield, for R. A. 
Alexander, of Woodford County, for $500. This 
colt was sired by H. L. Barker's Edwin Forrest 
(a Kentucky colt), now owned by S. Downing, 
Lexington, Kentucky." 

So we can take our choice of pedigrees. If Flora 
Temple had been born a few years later the Ham- 
bletonian advocates would surely have claimed 
her. It has always been a wonder to me that they 
did not, after all, assert that she was of collateral 



MESSENGER AND EARLY TROTTERS 111 

blood. When her new owner brought this most 
remarkable mare to New York, he had not the 
most remote idea that he held one of the wonders 
of the world. He believed that she was a pretty 
good pony, and could strike a good clip on the 
road. She was only 14.2 hands high and had a 
mere stump of a tail. Besides, she was nervous, 
and before she "found herself" had a rather 
choppy action. When she had learned the trick, 
however, her action was smooth and clock-like, 
and she glided along with almost unapproach- 
able grace. Moreover, when she broke she lost 
scarcely nothing, as she did not have to be pulled 
back almost to a standstill, but caught her trot- 
ting stride from what was very like a run. 

There are other books in which the record of 
Flora Temple can be found in all of its proud and 
brilliant details. She beat everything of her day, 
beginning with the Waite Pony on the Blooming- 
dale road in 1850, until Ethan Allen, Princess, 
George M. Patchen and all the good ones had to 
take her dust. She was not used under the saddle, 
but always to sulky or wagon. Hiram Woodruff, 
her first real trainer, says she was a great weight 



112 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

puller and was not in the least bothered by a 350 
pound wagon, but went along with it as merrily 
as though she were in a racing sulky. Her first de- 
feat was in 1853 by Black Douglas, a son of 
Henry Clay; but a few months later she had her 
revenge and beat the Clay stallion with apparent 
ease. In 1856 she took the trotting record away 
from Highland Maid by covering a mile in 
2.24^. The record remained with her for eleven 
years; she reduced it in 1859 to 2.19f, and so 
she was the first to trot better than 2.20, as 
Lady Suffolk was the first to go below 2.30. In 
1859 the little bay stump-tail mare was at the very 
zenith of her fame, though Hiram Woodruff was 
of opinion that the next year she might have 
surpassed this. The next year the Civil War 
broke out and she, not being in good form, was 
retired to the breeding farm of Aristides Welch, 
near Philadelphia. 

During the two or three last years of her pub- 
lic life. Flora Temple had nothing to beat, so she 
was sent all over the country " hippodroming " 
with Princess and George M. Patchen, variously. 
On the farm she dropped a few colts. Two were 



MESSENGER AND EARLY TROTTERS 113 

by sons of Hambletonian, and one by imported 
Leamington. They have not done much to per- 
petuate her prowess. My own idea is that in se- 
lecting mates for her the great cardinal principle 
of breeding: "like begets like," was utterly dis- 
regarded. The blood of a Hambletonian was 
probably too cold to mate with hers, though we 
do not know what hers was, and Leamington's 
conformation was too great a contrast. Though 
she has left no descendants that do her particu- 
lar honor, she has left by her performances im- 
perishable fame as the greatest trotter of her day, 
and her day lasted for more than a dozen years. 
There was a lull in trotting during the Civil 
War, just as there was in racing, but after the war 
the trotting tracks became even more popular 
than the running courses — not the most fash- 
ionable, but the most popular. Fashion has never 
forsaken the running horse, and probably never 
will ; but in the main, the trotting races have been 
patronized and managed by men of a slightly 
different social status. To be sure, there are not- 
able exceptions, exceptions so notable, indeed, 
that they ought to be suflScient to lift the ban from 



114 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

the trotting world ; but they have never been able 
to do it. And even during the ten years after the 
Civil War, when trotting was immensely popular, 
it was considered slightly a reproach to be inter- 
ested in the sport. It was during this period that 
Dexter took the trotting primacy away from 
Flora Temple, and the tribe of Hambletonian 
came into such prominence that the legislators 
who framed trotting-match rules, established a 
register and made laws fixing a standard en- 
titling a stallion or a mare to a place in these 
sacred books. And so the "Standard Bred 
Trotter" came into being, and his has been a 
long day — his advocates and admirers say a 
great day. 



CHAPTER SIX 

rysdyk's hambletonian and the standard 
bred trotters 

After Dexter, in 1867, took away from Flora 
Temple the trotting record by doing a mile in 
2.17^, his reputed sire, Rysdyk's Hambletonian 
was held in such high esteem by those trying to 
breed fast trotters, that they considered any horse 
not by him or of his breed to be not in the least 
worth while in any attempt to improve these 
light harness horses. So it is quite impossible to 
treat of the Standard Bred Trotters without also 
treating of Rysdyk's Hambletonian. There are 
many who do not, and never have, agreed with 
the Hambletonian admirers, and as I am one 
who once believed in the fictions as to his breed- 
ing and other excellences, I propose to be per- 
fectly fair by giving both sides of the story of a 
horse that cuts a most considerable figure in 

115 



116 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

American horse annals. Now, here is one side of 
the Hambletonian story, and I take the Hberty of 
quoting from Mr. Hamilton Busbey, a noted 
writer on trotting horses, and the editor of a pa- 
per devoted to trotting horse interests. He says : 

"Lewis G. Morris bred a mare by imported 
Sour Crout to Messenger, and the produce in 
1806 was a bay colt who developed into a horse 
of 16 hands, and is known to history as Mam- 
brino. He was never trained in harness, but was a 
natural trotter. Betsey Baker, the fastest mare 
of her day was sired by him. Amazonia, a snappy 
chestnut mare of 15.3 hands, showing quality, 
but of untraced blood, and who could trot to 2.50 
was bred to Mambrino, and whose outcome was 
Abdallah, whose register number is I. He was 
bred by John Tredwell, of Saulsbury Place, Long 
Island, was foaled in 1823, and developed into a 
bay horse of 15.3. As a four-year old, he trotted 
a mile in 3.10, but was not kind in harness, and 
was principally used under saddle. He made sea- 
sons on Long Island, in New Jersey, and in 
Orange County, and spent 1840 in the Blue 
Grass Region of Kentucky. In 1830 he passed to 



rysdyk's hambletonian 117 

Isaac Snediker, and after many changes of for- 
tune died of starvation and neglect on a Long 
Island Beach, and was buried in the sand. . . . 

"The Charles Kent mare was a bay of 15.3 
hands, foaled in 1834, with powerful stifles, and 
as a four-year old trotted a mile under saddle in 
2.41. She was by Bellfounder, a Norfolk trotter of 
15 hands, imported from England to Boston in 
1822, by James Bort. Imported Bellfounder was 
foaled in 1815, and the blood of his sire, Bell- 
founder, is at the foundation of the hackney 
breed. One Eye, a determined mare by Bishop's 
Hambletonian (son of Messenger), out of Silver- 
tail, a hardy brown mare by Messenger, was the 
dam of the Charles Kent mare, who found a 
happy nick in Abdallah. 

" The fruit of this union was a bay colt, foaled 
May 5, 1849, at Sugar Loaf, near Chester, 
Orange County, New York. This colt, when five 
weeks old, was purchased from the breeder, 
Jonas Seely, by a plain farmer with a lean pocket- 
book. The price named for mare and colt was 
$125, and the farmer, William M. Rysdyk, sat 
on the top rail of a fence and pondered for some 



118 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

time the vital question. The outlay would em- 
barrass him if the mare or colt should die. He fi- 
nally said yes, and the mother and son were taken 
to Chester. The bay colt, with star and hind 
ankles white, grew into a powerful horse 15.2, 
and was named Hambletonian. His head was 
large and expressive, his neck rather short, his 
shoulders and quarters massive and his legs 
broad and flat. His triple line to thoroughbred 
Messenger, over the substance imparting cross 
of Bellfounder, gave us the greatest progenitor of 
harness speed the world has seen. " 

I once believed all this just as sincerely as I am 
sure Mr. Busbey believes it, and, some ten years 
ago, I wrote this fiction about Hambletonian: 

"Messenger begat Mambrino, and Mam- 
brino begat Abdallah, and Abdallah begat Ham- 
bletonian. Now, the race may be said to have 
fairly begun, for there is scarcely a trotting horse 
in America which has not in its blood one, two, or 
three strains of this Hambletonian blood, for 
Hambletonian was the great-sire of trotters. He 
was a Messenger on both sides, great-grandson in 
the male line, and grandson and great-grandson 



RYSDYK*S HAMBLETONIAN 119 

in the female line, from which also came a new 
English cross, for his dam was by the imported 
hackney Bellfounder.* In him the Messenger 
blood was strong, and, himself a trotter of much 
speed, though never trained, he had the capacity 
of transmitting the trotting gait in a greater de- 
gree than any horse in history. " 

There are a good many misstatements in that 
paragraph ; but when I wrote it I was deceived by 
the false pedigrees which have been manufac- 
tured and recorded in the trotting-horse registers 
and stud-books. The truth is, that Hambleton- 
ian was a bull-like horse that was trained by 
Hiram Woodruff, but could never develop a 
speed equal to a mile in three minutes — 3.18, to 
be exact, being the best mile he ever did. As to his 
pedigree : Mambrino, the grandsire, was by Mes- 
senger; but he was worthless and also vicious. He 
could neither run nor trot. He was bred by Louis 
Morris, of Westchester County, New York, and 
sold to Major William Jones of Cold Spring Har- 
bor, Long Island. As he was worthless and a se- 

* No human being in the world knows anything whatever about the 
breeding of the Charles Kent mare, Hambletonian's dam. 



120 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

rious disappointment, Major Jones virtually gave 
him away, and he was used as a traveling stal- 
lion at a small fee. John Treadwell, a Quaker 
farmer near Jamaica, Long Island, had two 
Conestoga* or Pennsylvania Dutch draft-mares. 
Out of one of these mares, by Mambrino, was 
born Abdallah. This horse was so bad-tempered 
that he could never be broken to harness, but 
was ridden under the saddle. He had no speed 
either as a runner or trotter, not being able to do 
a mile in four minutes at any gait. He had a mule- 
like head and ears, a badly ewed neck, and a rat- 
tail. But he was a Messenger, despite the Cone- 
stoga crossing, and he was sold to Kentuckians 
for $4500. In less than six months the Kentuck- 
ians repented of their bargain, and sold him 

* I had a friend who was with the Confederate Cavalry when Lee 
invaded Pennsylvania to meet defeat at Gettysburg. He told me that 
the sleek, large Conestoga horses that were abundant in the section 
traversed were too tempting to be neglected, so many of the cavalry 
men abandoned their lean and battle scarred mounts and replaced them 
with the Conestogas. Before they reached the Potomac on their retreat 
southward, these cold blooded draft horses were completely used up and 
the soldiers swore at themselves for their folly in making the exchanges. 
The Conestogas are good draft horses and serviceable on farms where 
no quick work is required, but they are totally lacking in speed and the 
courage and stamina which speed requires. A more impossible cross than 
that between a Conestoga and a Thoroughbred could hardly be imagined. 



rysdyk's hambletonian 121 

back to New Yorkers for $500 — Messrs. Sim- 
mons & Smith, Bull's Head dealers, buying 
him as a speculation. No purchaser could the 
speculators find at any price, and the stallion 
was virtually given away to stop expenses of 
keeping. About this time Charles Kent wanted 
a new horse for his butcher wagon, and traded, 
through Alexander Campbell, of Bull's Head, 
his worn out mare to Edmund Seeley, a farmer 
in Orange County, New York, for a steer for 
butchering. The butcher's mare had, originally, 
been sold to him by Campbell, who had obtained 
her in a drove of western horses, paying $40 for 
her. Her pedigree was quite unknown. This mare 
is known in American horse history as the 
Charles Kent mare, and is said to be by imported 
Bellfounder. She was in foal to Abdallah when 
Seeley got her, and the colt and mare became the 
property of Bill Rysdyk, a hired man on Seeley's 
farm. Rysdyk looked around for a name for his 
colt — a name which should indicate the Mes- 
senger blood in him. There had been in the early 
years of the century a famous son of Messenger 
named after Alexander Hamilton. This horse 



122 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

finally became known as Bishop's Hamiltonian. 
In his effort to borrow the name, Rysdyk, being 
weak in his orthography, called his horse Rys- 
dyk*s Hambletonian. And so he lives in history — 
false in his pedigree as in his name. The public 
of that day believed this horse to be a son of 
Bishop's Hamiltonian, and for the sake of the 
Messenger blood he was served to the best mares 
in Orange County, and Orange County was rich 
in the Arab and Barb blood of the daughters and 
granddaughters of that great and unbeatable 
trotting horse, Andrew Jackson. No stallion ever 
had a better chance, and it was almost impossible 
that there should not have been good horses 
among his get. And there were. But the bad blood 
of his ancestry, sire and grandsire being worth- 
less degenerates, together with the utterly unmix- 
able Conestoga blood in his grandam, have 
been continually cropping out in his progeny — 
for faults more readily reappear than perfections 
— until now, when it must be acknowledged that 
the boasted horse type of which he is said to be 
the founder is no type at all. 

When the pedigree manipulators were manu- 



rysdyk's hambletonian 123 

facturing this line of descent for Rysdyk's Ham- 
bletonian, Alexander Campbell, of Bull's Head, 
was offered a thousand dollars to certify to the 
stated pedigree of the Charles Kent mare. 
Campbell declined, and ordered the Hamble- 
tonian emissaries out of his office. Here is an- 
other rather amusing evidence of the careful way 
in which the pedigree of Hambletonian was bol- 
stered up. There was no such horse as Bishop's 
Hambletonian. The horse alluded to was Alex- 
ander Hamilton, or Bishop's Hamiltonian. No- 
body ever thought of calling a Hamiltonian a 
Hambletonian until old Bill Rysdyk did it, simply 
because he was not gifted in the art of spelling. 
But this did not bother the record makers. They 
simply misspelled the name of the elder horse. 
Surely old Bill Rysdyk laid a spell on the gentle- 
men of the press, and he kept it to the end as his 
horse, shaped like a cart horse, rather than one 
filled with high blood, was a great money-maker 
in the stud. His earnings by the record were 
$184,725. 

When there was a great many men interested, 
and most sincerely, too, in the breeding of trot- 



124 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

ters, it was thought to be a good thing to inaugu- 
rate a systematic method of breeding and estab- 
Hsh a standard which should regulate the records 
that were to be kept of trotters. By general consent 
the suggestion of the Turf, Field and Farm^ Mr. 
Busbey's paper, a horse that could go a mile in 
2.30 was considered worthy to get a place in the 
register. This would have excluded all the trotters 
previous to the time of Lady Suffolk. But the 
matter was discussed, and Wallace's "American 
Trotting Register" was accepted as the official 
record of pedigrees, thus putting the business in 
the hands of the most ingenious partizan that has 
ever been interested in the horse business in 
this country. These were the rules that were 
adopted : 

"In order to define what constitutes a trotting-bred 
horse, and to establish a Breed of trotters on a more intelli- 
gent basis, the following rules are adopted to control ad- 
mission to the records of pedigrees. AVhen an animal meets 
with the requirements of admission and is duly registered, 
it shall be accepted as a standard trotting-bred animal. 

"First — ^Any stallion that has, himself, a record of two 
minutes and thirty seconds (2.30) or better; provided any 
of his get has a record of 2.40 or better; or provided his sire 



rysdyk's hambletonian 125 

or his dam, his grandsire or his grandam, is already a stan- 
dard animal. 

" Second — Any mare or gelding that has a record of 2.30 
or better. 

" Third — Any horse that is the sire of two animals with a 
record of 2,30 or better. 

" Fourth — Any horse that is the sire of one animal with a 
record of 2.30 or better; provided, he has either of the fol- 
lowing additional qualifications : — 

" 1. A record himself of 2.40 or better. 

" 2. Is the sire of two other animals with a record of 2.40 
or better. 

"3. Has a sire or dam, grandsire or grandam, that is 
already a standard animal 

" Fifth — Any mare that has produced an animal with a 
record of 2.30 or better. 

" Sixth — ^The progeny of a standard horse when out of a 
standard mare. 

"Seventh — ^The progeny of a standard horse out of a 
mare by a standard horse. 

" Eighth — The progeny of a standard horse when out of 
a mare whose dam is a standard mare. 

" Ninth — Any mare that has a record of 2.40 or better; 
and whose sire or dam, grandsire or grandam, is a standard 
animal. 

" Tenth — A record to wagon of 2.35 or better shall be re- 
garded as equal to a 2.30 record." 

Before much had been accomplished under 



126 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

these rules, Wallace, who was as militant as he 
was ingenious, got into a dispute with the Ken- 
tucky breeders over methods of breeding, the 
value of thoroughbred blood, the genuineness of 
his published pedigrees and about anything else 
that came along. So the Kentuckians started the 
"Breeders' Trotting Stud Book," the standard 
for it being a little modified. In a year or so, Wal- 
lace, seeing that the war was going against him, 
sold out his register and retired from the field. 
Then new rules were adopted, as follows* 

'The Trotting Standard 

" When an animal meets these requirements and is duly 
registered, it shall be accepted as a standard-bred trotter: — 

" 1. The progeny of a registered standard trotting horse 
and a registered standard trotting mare. 

"2. A stallion sired by a registered standard trotting 
horse, provided his dam and grandam were sired by regis- 
tered standard trotting horses, and he himself has a trotting 
record of 2.30 and is the sire of three trotters with records 
of 2.30, from different mares. 

" 3. A mare whose sire is a registered standard trotting 
horse, and whose dam and grandam were sired by regis- 
tered standard trotting horses, provided she herself has a 
trotting record of 2.30, or is the dam of one trotter with a 
record of 2.30. 



rysdyk's hambletonian 127 

" 4. A mare sired by a registered standard trotting horse, 
provided she is the dam of two trotters with records of 2.30. 

"5. A mare sired by a registered standard trotting horse, 
provided her first, second, and third dams are each sired by 
a registered standard trottinp' horse. 

"The Pacing Standard 

" When an animal meets these requirements and is duly 
registered, it shall be accepted as a standard-bred pacer: — 

" 1. The progeny of a registered standard pacing horse 
and a registered standard pacing mare. 

"2. A stallion sired by a registered standard pacing 
horse, provided his dam and grandam were sired by regis- 
tered standard pacing horses, and he himself has a pacing 
record of 2.25, and is the sire of three pacers with records of 
2.25, from different mares. 

" 3. A mare whose sire is a registered standard pacing 
horse, and whose dam and grandam were sired by regis- 
tered standard pacing horses, provided she herself has a 
pacing record of 2.25, or is the dam of one pacer with a 
record of 2.25. 

" 4. A mare sired by a registered standard pacing horse, 
provided she is the dam of two pacers with records of 2.25. 

"5. A mare sired by a registered standard pacing horse, 
provided her first, second, and third dams are each sired by 
a registered pacing horse. 

" 6. The progeny of a registered standard trotting horse 
out of a registered standard pacing mare, or of a registered 
standard trotting mare." 



128 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

And these are the rules that obtain to-day in 
keeping a register of which the rat-tailed semi- 
Conestoga Abdallah is No. 1. 

It will be seen by the rules certain features of 
the great breeding principle: "Like begets like" 
are followed, and there is no doubt that some 
intelligent breeders have tried most sincerely to 
embrace in the mating of stallions and mares all 
of the principles; but, as a rule, the speed test 
alone was considered instead of similarity of 
blood, similarity of conformation (for nature ab- 
hors great contrasts), and also performance. The 
importance given to the time tests and the public 
records and the disregard of pure and similar 
blood has detracted, in my opinion, most seri- 
ously from the success of the experiments and the 
effort to create a type of fast trotting horses. Why, 
the Standard Bred Trotter is not a type at all. 
They come in all sizes and shapes, they have no 
fixed gait, and not more than three per cent of 
them can trot fast enough to be considered even a 
good roadster. The visitors to the Speedway in 
New York have opportunities to see the best and 
fastest trotters in the world. There are certainly 



rysdyk's hambletonian 129 

some fine animals shown there, a few that are 
splendid. But they are of all sorts in conforma- 
tion and method of going. It cannot be a repro- 
ducing type under such circumstances. When a 
hundred colts and fillies are bred we want many 
more than three of that number to be able to ac- 
complish the purpose of their creation. At least 
half of the progeny of the Standard Bred Trotters 
should be trotters themselves and more than half 
of the remainder should be good general utility 
horses. That is the case with the Morgans and the 
Denmarks, the two true American types, for 
these types have substance and character, be- 
sides a systematic method of breeding is pursued 
where lineage and conformation rather than per- 
formance count. And even with the Standard Bred 
Trotters that go fast — the three per cent of them — 
quite half of them are pacers rather than trotters. 
Gen. Benjamin F. Tracy said in a letter to the 
Turf, Field and Farm, February 15, 1901, that 
the greater proportion of fast Standard Bred Trot- 
ters are not trotters at all, but pacers. There has 
been no one to dispute this statement, which was 
not one merely of opinion, but of compilation. 



130 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

The trotting men, however, avoid this by say- 
ing that trotting and pacing are the same gait, be- 
cause many horses both trot and pace and be- 
cause a pacer can be converted into a trotter. 
This theory is beyond my inteUigence. I know 
that the natural gaits of a natural horse are walk, 
trot, and gallop. Many that do these gaits, as in 
the case of the Denmarks, can do several others 
besides — the rack and the running walk, for in- 
stance. Yet no one will say that these gaits are all 
the same. It is too preposterous to discuss. Be- 
sides, the pace is not a fit gait for a gentleman's 
roadster. It may be well enough for butchers, 
barkeepers and gamblers, but a gentleman 
should have a gentleman's horse. 

It has not been a pleasure to say these things of 
what some call the great light harness horse of 
America; but when breeders, through false prin- 
ciples, go a wrong road it ought not to be con- 
sidered an unkindness to call their attention to 
the fact. A few years ago in a magazine article I 
told the truth about Hambletonian's breeding, 
and received many indignant letters of protest. 
One kind gentleman up in Massachusetts, asked 



rysdyk's hambletonian 131 

me to visit him, saying he should like to have the 
pleasure of kicking me across the state. I re- 
quested him to have a survey made so that I 
might know how far I would have to be propelled 
by the toe of his boot, as I did not care to put him 
to an undue amount of trouble. He has not re- 
plied, so, I presume the survey is not yet com- 
pleted. But breeders in Kentucky, in Vermont, 
and in Illinois wrote in complimentary terms, 
saying that they had paid dearly for their belief 
in false pedigrees and false principles of breeding. 
I am thoroughly persuaded that these false notions 
have cost the breeders of America millions and 
miUions of dollars, for a Standard Bred Trotter 
that does not go fast is a pretty poor specimen of 
a horse and worth very little, while the amounts 
spent in trying to develop speed which does not 
exist are colossal. 

But the records have unquestionably been 
lowered until the horse that can trot a mile in two 
minutes is one of the wonders of the world. Look 
at the record of progression. 

Boston Blue, black gelding 1818 3 . 00 

Bull Calf, bay gelding 1830 2.47i 



132 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

Edwin Forrest, black gelding 1838 2.36^ 

Dutchman, bay gelding 1839 2 . 32 

Lady Suffolk, gray mare 1845 2 . 29^ 

Pelham (converted pacer), bay gelding 1849 2.28 

Highland Maid (converted pacer), bay mare. 1853 2 . 27 

Flora Temple, bay mare 1856 2 . 24| 

Flora Temple, bay mare 1859 2 . 19f 

Dexter, brown gelding 1867 2 . 17j 

Goldsmith Maid, bay mare 1871 2 . 17 

Goldsmith Maid, bay mare 1874 2 . 14 

Rarus, bay gelding 1878 2 . 131- 
St. Julien, bay gelding 1879 2 . 12f 

Maud S., chestnut mare 1880 2 . lOf 

Maud S., chestnut mare 1881 2 . 10^ 

Jay-eye-See, black gelding 1884 2 . 10 

Maud S., chestnut mare 1884 2 . 09^ 

Maud S., chestnut mare 1885 2 . 08f 

Sunol, bay mare 1891 2 . 08^ 

Nancy Hanks, brown mare 1892 2 . 04 

Alix, bay mare 1894 2 . 03f 

The Abbot, bay gelding 1900 2 . 03| 

Cresceus, chestnut horse 1901 2. 02 J 

Lou Dillon, chestnut mare 1903 1 . 58^ 

This table shows that three minutes was re- 
duced in forty-one years to two minutes and 
twenty seconds — that is in that time forty sec- 
onds were lopped off the record. It took forty- 
four years to take off the next twenty seconds. In 



1* 




^1 



S^ 



rysdyk's hambletonian 133 

the meantime the bicycle, ball-bearing sulky had 
been invented, and the last half of this twenty 
seconds were cut off when this weightless and 
f rictionless vehicle was used. The Standard Bred 
Trotter had also been created. My idea is that the 
Dutchman, Henry Clay, and Lady Suffolk could 
either of them gone a mile in from ten to fifteen 
seconds faster than they did under modern" con- 
ditions of training, driving, shoeing and harness- 
ing and hitched to the modern vehicle. These ex- 
periments have all been very interesting, but I 
believe the same results might have been achiev- 
ed at a very much less cost and loss — indeed, 
with a profit. 

Exceeding high prices for trotting-horses have 
been very injurious to the horse-breeding indus- 
try. Whenever a trotting-horse brings twenty, 
forty or a hundred thousand dollars it sets the 
breeders, even the small ones wild with a desire to 
breed a colt that will bring such a price. Mr. Bon- 
ner began this with his purchase of Dexter, and 
followed it up by buying many others at very high 
figures, including Maud S. and Sunol. He doubt- 
less found this an excellent advertisement for 



134 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

himself and his paper, but it was a bad thing for 
the horses of the country. The purchase of Axtell 
at $105,000 and Arion at $125,000 was even more 
demoraHzing. No trotting-horse was ever worth 
that much and none probably ever will be. How- 
ever, it is an excellent thing for very rich men to 
breed horses. They can afford to make experi- 
ments, and if their experiments are successful the 
men of moderate means can imitate them and 
succeed also. But this trotting horse breeding 
business is a rich man's divertisement just as 
yachting is. The men who breed for profit should 
confine themselves to types which are reproduc- 
ing, to types which come true more frequently 
than they prove false. 

I firmly believe that if these trotters are ever 
made a consistently reproducing type, it will be by 
constant infusions of a mixture of trotting blood 
— Morgan or Clay — with that of the Thorough- 
bred. The first cross will probably not produce 
it, but if the mares of such unions be bred back to 
stallions of the blood mentioned, the result ought 
to be more satisfactory in the way of making a 
type, even though the experiments may not re- 



RYSDYK*S HAMBLETONIAN 135 

suit in phenomenal speed ; but there is no reason 
why there should not be a satisfactory percent- 
age of phenomenal speed as well. 



CHAPTER SEVEN 

THE CLAY AND CLAY-ARABIAN 

Henry Clay was one of the greatest horses that 
ever lived in this country. He was very fast, very 
strong and as game as it was possible for a horse 
to be. He founded a distinguished family, and 
from that family Mr. Randolph Huntington, of 
Fleetwood Farm, Oyster Bay, Long Island, by 
crossing Clay mares with Arab and Barb stal- 
lions, has created a type of as splendid horses as 
ever touched the earth. And it is a great pity that 
the United States Government has not long ago 
taken over all of Mr. Huntington's horses, so as to 
perpetuate this new and useful type into a great 
national horse. On the sire's side Henry Clay was 
a closely inbred Messenger. He was by Andrew 
Jackson, the greatest trotting horse of his day, 
and absolutely unbeaten during all his long ca- 
reer. Andrew Jackson was by Young Bashaw, 

136 



THE CLAY AND CLAY-ARABIAN 137 

and his dam was by Why Not, by imported Mes- 
senger, the grandam also being by imported Mes- 
senger. Young Bashaw was by the imported 
Arabian Grand Bashaw, the dam being Pearl by 
First Consul (Arab bred) out of Fancy by im- 
ported Messenger out of a daughter of Rocking- 
ham. Henry Clay's dam was the famous mare. 
Lady Surrey. She was bred in the neighbourhood 
of Quebec, Ontario, and was brought with 
twelve other horses into New York. With her 
mate, *' Croppy," she was sold to one of the Wisner 
family in Goshen, New York. The class to which 
Lady Surrey belonged was then called Kanucks, 
though some called them " Pile Drivers," because 
of their high-knee action. Records of breeding 
were not kept in Quebec, but all the external 
evidence points to an Oriental origin of the 
horses that were taken there from France. But 
the strong admixture of Arab and Barb blood in 
Henry Clay is evident from the recorded part of 
his pedigree and disregarding the blood of his dam. 
Henry Clay was foaled in 1837, and lived until 
1867. He was bred by Mr. George M. Patchen, 
of New Jersey, and afterwards passed into the 



138 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

hands of Gen. William Wadsworth, of Geneseo, 
New York. Probably, if he had remained the 
property of Patchen, he would have had a better 
chance as a sire, for there were times during the 
Wadsworth ownership, when this horse suffered 
alternately from neglect and abuse. When Gen- 
eral Wadsworth, wanted to buy the colt, he asked 
Mr. Patchen to put a price on him. Mr. Patchen, 
not anxious to sell, finally put on a price which he 
thought prohibitive. "We will give the horse all 
the water he can drink," he said to General 
Wadsworth, " and then weigh him, and you may 
give me one dollar a pound for him." General 
Wadsworth promptly accepted, and the horse 
weighing 1050 pounds, that fixed the price, which 
was paid immediately, and the horse was sent at 
once to Livingston County, New York. 

Once when General Wadsworth had a match 
at mile heats, best three in five, he drove his horse 
ninety-eight miles the day before the race, rather 
than pay forfeit, and then won the race, one heat 
being trotted in 2.35. This was in 1847. Consider 
the clumsy shoes, the heavy sulkies, and other 
impedimenta of that time, in comparison with 



THE CLAY AND CLAY-ARABIAN 139 

the wire-like plates, ball-bearing, pneumatic- 
tired sulkies, and cobweb-like harness of to-day. 
and decide whether even the most phenomena] 
of our trotters is better than that. 

Another performance shows the stoutness of 
heart of this great horse. General Wadsworth 
needed a doctor for his sister. Henry Clay was 
harnessed to a two-seated wagon, did the journey 
from Geneseo to Rochester, thirty-eight miles, 
and then back again, the whole seventy-six miles 
being covered in less than five hours. A horse that 
could do that was worthy to found a family. He 
did this through his son. Black Douglas, his 
grandson, Cassius M. Clay, and his grandson, 
George M. Patchen. His female descendants are 
conspicuous in the trotting-horse pedigrees, the 
most conspicuous among them being Green 
Mountain Maid, the dam of Electioneer, and 
conceded by the Standard Bred Trotter element 
to be the greatest dam in American horse 
history. She was got by Harry Clay,* a great 
grandson of the founder of the family. 

* It has been said that the Star mare, the dam of Dexter, was served 
both by Rysdyk's Hambletonian and Harry Clay the spring before Dex- 



140 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

Mr. Huntington has long believed that the 
Clay was the best trotting blood in America, and 
when this blood was spoken of contemptuously 
by Mr. Robert Bonner and called "Sawdust" 
Mr. Huntington's indignation knew no bounds. 
However, the blood could never become unpopu- 
lar after the record of the Green Mountain Maid 
in producing trotters. All of her colts could trot — 
she had sixteen — and trot fast. But Mr. Hunt- 
ington's opportunity to utilize this Clay blood 
came when General Grant received a present of 
two stallions from the Sultan of Turkey. When 

ter's birth, and that it is more likely that Harry Clay was the sire of Dexter 
because of Dexter's resemblance to the Clays rather than the Hamble- 
tonians, and also because of his stoutness of heart. As Dexter was a geld- 
ing and incapable of leaving progeny this question is more interesting than 
important. I have no opinion in the matter, but as I am convinced of the 
general inaccuracy of the records of the day, I am not at all prepared to 
believe that Dexler's pedigree as put in the books is accurate. About the 
time he became famous the Hambletonian party was numerous and pow- 
erful and by no means scrupulous in claiming everything in sight. 

The dam of the trotting stallion George Wilkes was also said to be by 
Henry Clay. The Hambletonian advocates — George Wilkes was sired by 
Hambletonian — were so bitter in their opposition to the Clay blood, that 
they refused to accept this and preferred that the l^reeding of George 
Wilkes' dam should be set down as unknown. I have read a good deal that 
has been written on the subject and can only say that the statements pro 
and con are equally unconvincing and only illustrate over arrain the utter 
untrustworthiness of the early records, together with the partizan dis- 
courtesy of the disputants. 



THE CLAY AND CLAY- ARABIAN 141 

General Grant took his famous trip around the 
world, the Sultan entertained him at Constanti- 
nople. Among the things that particularly inter- 
ested the General there were the Sultan's stables. 
The Sultan hearing of this, selected two of the 
best stallions in his collection and gave them to 
the General. The stallions were Leopard, an 
Arab, and Linden Tree, a Barb. Mr. Hunting- 
ton at once set about getting General Grant's 
consent to use these horses for breeding. He got 
the consent and set about securing what he con- 
sidered proper mares. It seems a pity that Gen- 
eral Grant had not turned these horses entirely 
over to Mr. Huntington. He was not himself a 
breeder, and after he reached middle life was 
only interested in driving horses. So these stal- 
lions were really white elephants on his hands. 
But Mr. Huntington might have made a more 
extensive use of them than he did. His theory was 
that these horses should be bred to virgin Clay 
mares. And he secured several of them. As a 
breeder Mr. Huntington is one of those who hold 
to the theory that a mare once pregnant to a 
horse is liable, if not likely, in later foals to 



142 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

"throw back", as it is somewhat technically ex- 
pressed, and show in these later foals the charac- 
teristics of the sire of the first pregnancy. This is 
a matter of dispute among breeders. The theory 
has been proved, so far as dogs are concerned, in 
my own experience. I had a fox terrier bitch. 
She was accidentally served by a spaniel. When 
she was next bred it was to a proper fox terrier 
and there was no chance of error. The ensuing lit- 
ter of puppies was a mongrel lot, showing spaniel 
traces, and all of them had to be destroyed. Then, 
as to horses. Mr. Bruce said that Dr. Warfield, 
the breeder of Lexington, had had thorough- 
bred mares served by Jacks for the producing of 
mules, and later had got winning colts from the 
same mares by Thoroughbred stallions. It is an 
interesting matter with breeders and by no means 
settled. But Mr. Huntington did not want to take 
any chances in making this new venture, so he 
sought and obtained virgin mares, that the pro- 
geny might not be tainted with other than the 
blood of the sires. 

Mr. Huntington also holds to the theory that 
when breeding with homogeneous blood that 



THE CLAY AND CLAY-ARABIAN 143 

the degree of consanguinity between sire and 
dam may be very much closer than is the usual 
practice. In other words, he is an advocate of in- 
breeding so long as the experiments be not be- 
tween horses of heterogeneous and unmixable 
blood. Under the latter circumstances he 
thoroughly agrees with the rest of the world that 
the mongrelization of the product is increased. 
Indeed, it can be increased in no way more surely, 
for the prevailing characteristics of an animal 
type are increased by inbreeding and when the 
animals are mongrels to begin with, that which is 
bad in them becomes more and more exaggerated 
in the offspring. Mr. Huntington has been a 
breeder and a writer on breeding for more than 
half a century. In a controversy he is, what may be 
called, without any offense to him, I am sure, decid- 
edly militant. It has, therefore, been the case that 
not unfrequently his discussions as to the breed- 
ing of horses have been fast and furious. If I dis- 
agreed with him in his conclusions I should re- 
frain from saying this — indeed, I should not re- 
mark his personal characteristics at all. But I 
feel that the misrepresentations to which he has 



144 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

been subjected should be spoken of, for they have 
been cruel and continuous, and have done great 
injustice to one of the most sincere, most honest 
and most capable horse breeders who has ever 
lived and worked in this country. Moreover, he 
has had more than a due share of misfortune in 
one way and another. 

When he had got well along with his experi- 
ments with the Clay mares and the Grant stal- 
lions, and proved to his own satisfaction and that, 
also, of many of the friends who were observing 
his operations, it was considered desirable to en- 
large the plant. There were few sales, for the ob- 
viously wise course was to keep the collection to- 
gether for observation and until the type sought 
after should be jfixed and reproducing. So more 
capital was taken in, and a man considered one 
of the chief financial lawyers of New York, or- 
ganized a company and became its treasurer. In 
a year or so this lawyer was apprehended in some 
of the most far reaching financial rascalities ever 
perpetrated in the metropolis. He ruined estates 
in his charge, and corporations with which he 
was connected. Mr. Huntington's horse-breeding 



THE CLAY AND CLAY-ARABIAN 145 

company among the others. Here was a blow. 
The collection had to be dispersed just as it had 
arrived at success. Though at that time Mr. 
Huntington was an old man, he did not give up. 
He bought what of the collection he could, and 
started in again. His second attempt proves 
that he is entirely right, as he produces with an 
absolute certainty two classes of as admirable 
horses as I have ever seen. The first, and the one 
that ought to be most useful, is represented in the 
illustration in this book of Clay-Kismet, and the 
other by Nimrod. Clay-Kismet is 16J hands high, 
and is as perfectly adapted for a carriage horse as 
any I have seen — as well adapted even as the 
Golddust, of which I spoke in the Morgan 
chapter. His symmetry, finish and high breeding 
adapt him particularly for this, while the clean- 
ness of his action gives a final perfection that 
cannot fail to excite admiration in those who 
know and love horses. He is by an Arab stallion 15 
hands in stature, out of a closely inbred Clay 
mare, the union resulting in a horse larger than 
either sire or dam. It is a singular thing that even 
the purely bred Arabs, mated by Mr. Hunting- 



146 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

ton and bred on his place, increase very much in 
size and action. For instance, Khaled, when I last 
saw him was 15.3 J hands, which is something like 
a hand taller than either Naomi, his dam, or 
Nimr, his sire. Here was an interesting instance 
of inbreeding, as Naomi was the grandam of 
Nimr, the sire of Khaled. Whether this increase 
in size was due to inbreeding or to transplanta- 
tion to a different climate than the desert, with 
different and better food, I am not prepared to 
say. But it is a striking change for the better. The 
other horse I alluded to is Nimrod, now, I am 
sorry to say, in the Philippines; he is more of a 
pony or cob type — something, indeed, like the 
earlier generations of Morgans, this type is most 
admirable in light harness, or to use in the stud in 
the creation of polo ponies. This horse was sired 
by Abdul Hamid II, son of General Grant's 
Leopard out of Mary Sheppard, an inbred Clay 
mare. 

These Clay-Arabians are as remarkable for 
their intelligence and docility as are the Morgans. 
Their action is as clean and elegant and their 
bottom cannot be surpassed. If this double ac- 




Z o 

5 -5 
< = 



— - 



THE CLAY AND CLAY-ARABIAN 147 

compllshment of a single private owner be suf- 
fered to be wasted it will be a pity indeed, as well 
as a national reproach. 



CHAPTER EIGHT 

THE DENMARK, OR KENTUCKY SADDLE-HORSE 

The assessed value of horses tabulated by States 
would make it appear that Kentucky horse-flesh 
was not more precious than in other parts of the 
Union. And yet Kentucky horses have a fame 
that is not approached by those of any other 
state. This is due to the fact that in a small sec- 
tion of the state, none but horses of high breeding 
are reared. A few counties give to the whole state 
a reputation which, I am afraid, the whole state 
does not deserve. But in the famous Blue Grass 
region the noblest horses of several types and kinds 
have been bred for more than a hundred years. 
It is distinctively the breeding place in America 
of the English Thoroughbred, and comparatively 
few men who have gone into the reproduction of 
these interesting and fleet animals have refrained 
sooner of later from buying or renting farms in 

148 



THE KENTUCKY SADDLE-HORSE 149 

Central Kentucky to carry on their operations. 
So, also, with the trotters. Indeed, it has been 
maintained that in this lime stone region, where 
blue grass is indigenous and where it was found in 
abundance in the park-like woods by the early 
explorers that the very bones of horses that had 
grazed upon it from infancy were harder, stouter 
and less sponge-like than those from anywhere 
else. This much for the virtue of the lime stone 
nurtured merits of the blue grass. 

But the people have had much to do with the 
excellence of Kentucky horses. They seem to 
have been by nature interested in the breed of 
horses from the beginning of their settlement 
there. One of the first records of the Colonial era 
is that of a Kentuckian who was killed by an 
Indian while training a race-horse on a frontier 
race-course. And among the seven first statutes 
enacted by the Colony when in preparation to 
become a state of the Union, was one to regulate 
the range and improve the breed of horses. They 
were horse lovers in Kentucky in the beginning as 
they are to-day. And to-day there is no crime that 
is looked upon with more contempt than to mis- 



150 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

represent the breeding of a horse. In Kentucky a 
gentleman may kill another gentleman if his 
cause be just, and suffer no reproach save that of 
himself; but if he palter with the pedigree of a 
horse he trifles with his caste, and is ranked with 
the sneak thieves and the pickpockets who take 
their victims unaware, and achieve at once a 
petty and cowardly advantage. This love of the 
horse and knowledge of him has gone on from 
generation to generation until it has become a 
part, and no inconsiderable part of the heritage 
of every Kentuckian who considers himself well 
born. 

Some twenty years ago a Kentucky horse- 
breeder was in Boston, visiting a gentleman with 
whom he had business. The Bostonian, with the 
characteristic hospitality of those Dr. Holmes 
catalogued as of the "Brahmin caste," showed 
the K^entuckian about. He pointed out to him the 
equestrian statue of Washington at the head of 
Commonwealth Avenue. "There is the Washing- 
ton statue, " remarked the Bostonian. "And what 
was the breeding of the horse .^" the Kentuckian 
inquired. The horse to him was almost every- 



THE KENTUCKY SADDLE-HORSE 151 

thing. And, later in the day, when dinner was 
over at the hospitable Bostonian's home, and the 
ladies and children were retiring, the Kentuck- 
ian leaned over to his host and said, with enthu- 
siam: "By Gad, Colonel, you have outbred 
yourself. " That was a heartfelt tribute expressed 
in the natural way in which a Kentuckian should 
speak. No wonder that they have fine horses 
when they give so much thought to this subject of 
breeding. 

But for all this Kentucky has produced only 
one distinctive reproducing type. Her trotters — 
if type they be — belong as much elsewhere as to 
Kentucky; her runners are purely English. Her 
Denmarks, however, belong to Kentucky. They 
have been bred there for more than sixty years, 
and as a distinctive American type, they are sec- 
ond only in this country to the Morgans of Ver- 
mont. It is a singular fact and not unworthy of 
note that only two states have produced distinct 
American reproducing types, Vermont and Ken- 
tucky, and those were the first two states admit- 
ted to the Union after the original thirteen got 
ready to embrace other sisters. 



152 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

It is most curious how a type happens. The 
Morgans, as has been shown in a previous 
chapter, came from a horse whose pedigree was 
not even considered, and to this day is known 
only by conjecture and not at all by established 
fact. He was considered a good horse in his day, 
but it was not until his sons begat colts of excep- 
tional merit that it was thought worth while to in- 
quire into his origin, and that of his antecedents. 
With Denmark it was, in a degree, different. Den- 
mark was a Thoroughbred, though some who are 
over-critical, quarrel with the pedigree of his dam. 
Let that be as it may. In 1839, when he was foal- 
ed, begat by Imported Hedgeford out of Betsey 
Harrison, he was about as good a Thoroughbred 
as the generality of those we had in America. 
Moreover, he was a successful contestant on the 
turf and a good horse at four-mile heats. These 
disputes as to the purity of the blood of our early 
horses are rather academic than practical. In all 
of the early race-horses, not purely English, there 
were infusions of the American basic blood; and 
for that matter this was the case also in England, 
where the Thoroughbred at that time was only 



THE KENTUCKY SADDLE-HORSE 153 

newly evolved with the aid of Oriental blood from 

the native strains. Here, however, is his pedigree 

of Denmark traced back for several generations: 

PEDIGREE OF DENMARK 



•T3 

be 

a 

d 
E 



.2 
t 

K 

n 



s 

a! J 






Haphazard. 



Mrs. Barnet 



Orville. 



Marchioness. 



Director. 



Betsey Haxall. 



Potomac 



Saltram Mare. . . . 
(Timoleun's dam) 



Sir Peter 



f Highflyer 
( Papillon 
f Echpse 
1 Clio 
f Pot-8-os 
1 Maria 

_ , . f Woodpecker 

"-^^"g^*^^ iHeikel 



[ MissHervey. 
Waxy 



f King Fergus 

1 Daughter 

r Highflyer 

1 Termagant 

_ , f Dungannon 

Lurcher -s ,, ^° 

(. Vertumus 



Bemiingbrough 



Evelina 



Miss Cogden 



f Phenomenon 
1 Daughter 



Symmes' Wildair. i ^f" F^a^naught 
( Jolly Roger Mare 

Eclipse Mare... I Harris' EcUpse 

( Daughter 
Imp. Sir Harry. . . | Sir Peter Teazle 

{ Matron 
Saltram Mare. • • • f Imp. Saltram 
(Timoleun's dam) 1 Daughter 
Florizel 
Sister to Juno 
f Pegasus 
" 1. Nancy McCuIlock 

r Imp. Saltram . . . . | Eclipse 
J [ Virago 

I Daughter | Symmes' Wildair 

^ I Daughter 



Imp. Diomed . . . . < 
Fairy 



154 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

That is pretty good breeding, even though the 
ancestors of Potomac might not pass muster 
with those who look very closely back through 
the sixteen generations. It may be that this so- 
called "cold-streak" in Denmark, through his 
maternal great grandsire, was just what was 
needed when he was mated with the Kentucky 
mares whose produce has given him enduring 
fame. 

In England the Thoroughbred is thought to be 
the ideal saddle-horse. I confess that I have had 
the Thoroughbred fever pretty badly. But that was 
a long time ago ; and maybe that fever was con- 
temporaneous with Anglo-mania; indeed, the 
former mav have been due to the latter. Personal 
preferences, however, have properly little weight 
in a judicial inquiry. My whole effort in this book 
has been to be entirely fair. Personally, I care for 
a very few gaits in a saddle-horse. I am quite con- 
tent with the walk, the trot and the gallop. The 
Thoroughbred does all of these with, to say the 
least, a reasonable satisfaction. But it is unques- 
tionably true that a well-formed, well-trained, 
well-bred Denmark will go all three of these gaits 



THE KENTUCKY SADDLE-HORSE 155 

with better style and more finish than any Thor- 
oughbred. Besides, he can readily be taught the 
amble or pace, the running- walk, or fox-trot, and 
the rack or single foot. That some do not care for 
these gaits is not in the least a reproach upon the 
capacity of the horse that can do them at the bid- 
ding of the rider. Moreover, this multiplicity of 
gaits does not in the least detract from the com- 
plete finish of each and all. This fact has become 
so apparent that there is a kind of hostility be- 
tween New York and South and Western horse- 
show standards as to what a saddle-horse shall be 
like. A thoroughly gaited horse, trained in all the 
paces, would look absurd in the eyes of those who 
like such horses if he were shorn of his tail. It is 
considered by many who care only for the three 
gaits that a saddle-horse must have a docked 
tail. A few years ago a man with a thoroughly 
gaited horse could show him, long tail and all, in 
the Southern and Western circuit, and then bring 
him to New York and Philadelphia where he 
would tie up the horse's tail and only exhibit the 
walk, trot and gallop. Now, this still may be per- 
missible ; but, if not absolutely denied, it is sternly 



156 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

frowned upon. So really the question has become 
the highly absurd one of tail or no tail. It is about 
as absurd as to deny the place to an applicant for 
a position where knowledge of French was re- 
quired because he also knew Italian and Spanish. 
The breeders and trainers of Denmarks are too 
practical, however, to shed tears over such fool- 
ishness. They breed their horses the same as 
before, but they train this one for the East and 
that one for the West and South. The quality 
tells wherever they go, and a horse in any section 
that takes a blue ribbon away from a Denmark is 
more than lucky, he is almost unique. 

For several years past, however, at the Horse 
Show in New York, a gentleman from England 
has come over to judge the saddle classes. In 
England he is, no doubt, as good a judge of such 
classes as may be had, for there the Thoroughbred 
is the one type, except the cob, that is considered 
as filling the requirements for the saddle. Before 
the advent of this gentleman, a great master in 
training, exhibiting and judging saddle-horses, 
had acted for a good many years. He had, by his 
awards, established a standard that made it al- 



THE KENTUCKY SADDLE-HORSE 157 

most impossible for other horses to compete with 
the Denmarks. He appeared to think — I have 
never spoken with him on the subject — that 
symmetry, good manners, good mouth, style of 
action both in front and behind, sure-footedness, 
docility, and intelligence were the requisites to be 
aimed at. Now, these are all characteristics of the 
Denmark. Not all are characteristics of the Thor- 
oughbred. For instance, in the slow gaits a Thor- 
oughbred, particularly one that has ever been in 
training, is not sure-footed ; he travels too close to 
the ground. Again, he is not docile, as he becomes 
very easily excited, and when his blood is up, 
wants to gallop at full speed. His mouth, owing 
to this easily aroused excitement, more frequently 
than not, gets all wrong, and he responds more to 
force than to that sympathy which makes a good 
saddle-horse, and his rider seem to be one. His 
style of action is inferior to that of the Denmark 
both in front and behind and, as a general thing, 
he lacks the symmetry of substance which is really 
the most remarkable thing about a Denmark. It is 
surely a pity that there should be in our show 
rings this confusion as to standards. The Thor- 



158 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

oughbred type as a saddle-horse standard does 
not obtain away from New York. In Philadelphia, 
in Boston, in Chicago and all over the South and 
West, the Denmark is still the saddle-horse par 
excellence, as he deserves to be. A friend of mine, 
in upholding the New York authorities for get- 
ting an English judge for American saddle-horses, 
says that the substitution was wise, because the 
Kentucky horses hammer themselves all to 
pieces on the hard roads in the parks of the East. 
If the park roads in the East are harder than the 
Kentucky turnpikes, I have yet to see them. His 
idea seemed to be that every Kentucky horse was 
sure to rack. But that is not so at all. He racks 
when he is taught, and he is taught so easily that 
he acquires the gait by what might be called sec- 
ond nature; but the Denmark can be turned out 
whenever desired to go only the three gaits — 
walk, trot, and canter — and he does these with a 
finish that the Thoroughbred cannot approach. 

But these other easily acquired Kentucky gaits 
are not to be despised. The running- walk is not 
hard upon the horse, and it is the easiest of all on 
the rider. When men on business, or soldiers on a 




- ^ 



THE KENTUCKY SADDLE-HORSE 159 

march both have to go great distances in the sad- 
dle, the running- walk is about as great an excel- 
lence as a horse can be endowed with. It came 
into being in this country when most journeys 
were made on horseback. In those days, when 
about to take the long road from Lexington to 
Washington and Philadelphia, a man would have 
been considered lacking in intelligence who ex- 
pressed contempt for either the amble or the fox- 
trot. And when Morgan's men, during the Civil 
War, were making those wonderful raids — now 
here, now there, and the next day out of sight — 
they were generally mounted on these Kentucky- 
bred horses — not Thoroughbreds, but Den- 
marks and others of the saddle-class type, the 
one type that particularly belongs to Kentucky, 
and one of the very few types that we can call 
American. 

Long before Denmark came to Kentucky — 
fifty years and more — there had been good 
saddle-horses there. There was an urgent need 
for them, and men of enterprise usually get what 
they need. They had been brought from Virginia 
by the early settlers, they had come from Canada 



160 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

and from Vermont. They were excellent horses 
for the purposes of the time, but they lacked the 
fine finish that came to them from Denmark and 
other Thoroughbred crosses that were made about 
his time. It was not appreciated to the full what 
an excellent cross Denmark made on those old 
time mares until after his death, and the appear- 
ance of his sons as sires — particularly Gaines's 
Denmark. From this latter horse the best saddle- 
horses that Kentucky has produced have de- 
scended and, in many instances, they breed back 
to him two, three and four times. To my mind, 
here is the strongest proof that the Denmark is a 
fixed reproducing type. Inbreeding is fatal among 
mongrels of any sort; but where the type is fixed 
it may be done with most excellent results and 
strictly, too, according to the rule of "like beget- 
ting Hke. " 

Here is another peculiarity of the Denmark. 
His excellence as a driving horse is only exceeded 
by his virtues under the saddle. I am well aware 
that men of fortune, who can keep as many horses 
in their stables as they choose, rather scoff at 
the "combination horse. " All right for them. All 



THE KENTUCKY SADDLE-HORSE I6l 

of US, however, are not so fortunately situated. 
When a man whose means only enable him to 
keep a few horses — or even one horse — and he 
wants both to ride and drive, the "combination 
horse" is the only animal that will enable him to 
go how and when he chooses. The Denmarks 
make splendid combination horses. They trot in 
harness with quite reasonable speed and very 
good action, and the road is seldom too long for 
them. My personal experience has not shown me 
that this change from saddle to harness worked 
any great harm. I once had a Denmark that won 
first prizes at the same show in the rings for sad- 
dle-horses, for combination horses and for road- 
sters; all these winnings in two days. It seems 
only reasonable that horses with the activity, the 
adaptability, and the intelligence to acquire the 
various gaits that are within a Denmark's range 
would not necessarily be injured by driving in 
harness. At any rate, a man who has only a small 
stable can get more kinds of fun out of a Den- 
mark than out of any other type of horse. 

This type of horse is bred in five or six coun- 
ties grouped about Lexington. There are several 



162 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

large breeders, but pretty nearly every farmer has 
a saddle mare or two that are regularly bred. But 
the supply is not up to the demand. The dealers 
and trainers have their eyes open all the time for 
promising individuals to train for the show rings, 
and supply to wealthy customers in various parts 
of the country. They get first choice because they 
are willing, when they come across a particularly 
fine specimen, to take it even as a yearling. As 
these animals are usually not salable until four 
years old, it will be seen that the disposal of the 
yearling is an attractive thing for the breeder and 
risky for the dealer. But there are still a good 
many of them needed for use at home, as the 
young Blue Grass Kentuckian must have his sad- 
dler so that he can range the country-side at wnll. 
Most men, unacquainted with the easy gaits of a 
Kentucky saddle-horse, as used in his native 
counties, would think it rather strange to go 
courting on horseback, and arrive at one's des- 
tination hot and mussed up. But these easily 
gaited horses do not muss one up any more than 
a hansom cab does. This easiness of gait reminds 
me of another use for which they are invaluable. 



THE KENTUCKY SADDLE-HORSE 163 

The planters in the South, as a general thing, go 
about their places on horseback, also visiting the 
village and their neighbors in the same way. In 
that generally warm climate a Thoroughbred or 
trotting horse would get the rider so warm that a 
change of clothes would be necessary; but these 
Southern gentlemen do not find such a need. In- 
deed, I have been told that one accustomed to the 
saddle and the climate can attend to business and 
social duties, plus two or three mint juleps, with- 
out any great inconvenience. 

When I was asked last year by the Civil Gov- 
ernment of the Philippines to select some mares 
and stallions for transportation there for breeding 
and the improvement of the ponies in the Islands, 
I bought as many Denmark mares as the con- 
ditions of my commission permitted. As my time 
was limited I had to scour several counties very 
thoroughly. The gentlemen I first consulted were 
rather discouraging, but I got in a few weeks as 
fine a lot as ever left Kentucky, and the picture 
that is in this book shows a group of them 
at pasture just before they were started on 
their long journey to the other side of the world. 



164 HE HORSE IN AMERICA 

where they arrived, I am glad to say, with a loss 
of only two per cent. It was more difficult to find 
Denmark stallions. The scarcity of these is due to 
the efforts of the dealers and trainers to get males 
for their customers. So many of the most prom- 
ising are sold as yearlings and gelded. The great- 
est stallions of the day are, I should judge, Mont- 
gomery Chief, belonging to the Ball Brothers, 
Highland Denmark, belonging to the Gay 
Brothers, and Forest Denmark, belonging to 
Colonel Woodford. These are all closely-inbred 
Denmarks, and are most successful as sires, their 
progeny winning blue ribbons wherever shown. 

These horses have found their way into Ten- 
nessee, Illinois, and Missouri, where the stock is 
most highly esteemed ; but they flourish most in 
Kentucky. I have heard army officers say that in 
the hard riding days, when the Indian was still a 
frontier menace, that a troop of cavalry mounted 
on horses from Kentucky would find their 
horses in first-class condition when other troops 
on horses say from Iowa, Missouri, or Illinois 
would be completely worn out and unable to con- 
tinue. These horses are singularly free from 



THE KENTUCKY SADDLE-HORSE 165 

blemishes. I noticed this particularly when mak- 
ing the Philippine purchases just alluded to. Here 
every horse had to be absolutely sound, or, as 
they say in Kentucky, " without a pimple. " The 
small percentage of rejection for unsoundness 
really surprised me. This was testimony to the 
careful selection in breeding that is practised 
there. One other word as to this experience. 
When a breeder was asked whether his offering 
were broken or trained, he either looked bewil- 
dered or treated the question as a joke. This was 
because all of them are perfectly broken and, as a 
mere matter of course, both to saddle and 
harness. 

The prevailing size of the Denmarks, I should 
say, is 15.2, the weight 1050 pounds. In color 
they are usually bays or chestnuts, though there 
are browns, blacks and grays. I never saw a dun; 
but I have seen a few roans. The usual practice 
is to handle them at two years old, train them 
gently at three, and give them a complete edu- 
cation at four. 

The American Saddle Horse Breeders* Asso- 
ciation keeps and publishes a register affirming 



166 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

that the following sires are the founders of the 
type: 

Denmark (Thoroughbred), by Imp. Hedgeford. 

John Dillard, by Indian Chief (Canadian). 

Tom Hal (Imported from Canada). 

Cabell's Lexington, by Gist's Black Hawk (Morgan). 

Coleman's Eureka (Thoroughbred and Morgan). 

Van Meter's Waxy (Thoroughbred). 

Stump the Dealer (Thoroughbred). 

Peter's Haleorn. 

Davy Crockett. 

Pat Cleburne, by Benton's Gray Diomed. 

This wide inclusion is hospitable and prob- 
ably just, for the blood of all these horses com- 
mingling with the old stock has made the Ken- 
tucky saddle-horses what they are, but among 
them all the Denmarks are pre-eminent. That 
they should be a reproducing type is, no doubt, 
due to the Oriental blood in the Thoroughbreds 
and the fresh infusions that came with the Jef- 
ferson Barbs, Keene Richards's Arabs and from 
other more recent sources. 



CHAPTER NINE 

THE GOVERNMENT AS A BREEDER 

The United States as a government has never 
until now conducted any horse-breeding experi- 
ments. Army oflScers have frequently tried to in- 
duce the War Department to start a breeding es- 
tablishment so that remounts of a proper kind 
could be supplied to the cavalry. But the idea has 
never appealed to Congress, and in this particu- 
lar direction nothing has been done. Dr. D. E. 
Salmon, the accomplished chief of the Bureau of 
Animal Industry of the Agricultural Department, 
has inserted what may be the ** entering- wedge" 
for at the Colorado Agricultural Experiment Sta- 
tion a few mares and stallions have been assem- 
bled, and an effort will be made to breed a type of 
carriage horses, a type badly needed. Of this ex- 
periment Dr. Salmon says: 

"In the countries of the world where horse 

167 



168 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

breeding has been encouraged by government as- 
sistance the foundation has been native stock, 
and the key to successful work has been selection 
according to a certain type. Furthermore, with all 
due respect to Godolphin Arabian, the Darley 
Arabian and their contemporaries, the great fac- 
tor in developing the Thoroughbred horse was the 
method of the English breeder, and more credit 
is due to native English stock and to environment 
than has generally been acknowledged. The Thor- 
oughbred has been the great leavening power in 
developing English breeds of light horses; the 
trotter may bear the same relation to the horse 
stock of America. 

**The trotter is found throughout the country 
wherever horses are raised, and any improve- 
ment in this breed affects in time the entire horse 
industry. The light harness classes can be sup- 
plied from this source, and there is no more effec- 
tive way to provide a supply of suitable cavalry 
horses for the United States army than by show, 
ing how the native horse may be improved. 

"That the trotter has faults no one will deny, 
and that the speed idea has been responsible foi' 



THE GOVERNMENT AS A BREEDER 169 

many of these faults and has caused many a man 
to become bankrupt are equally certain. If a 
horse can trot 2.10 or better it is reasonably cer- 
tain that he will make money for his owner, and 
it matters not how homely or unsound he may be; 
but if the horse has bad looks and unsoundness, 
and also lacks speed, he will be unprofitable on 
the track, and can not be sold at a profitable 
price on the market, while, if used in the stud, 
his undesirable qualities are perpetuated. On the 
other hand, if the horse has a moderate speed, but 
is sound, handsome and stylish, with a shapely 
head and neck, a straight, strong back, straight 
croup, muscular quarters and stifles, well-set 
legs, possesses good all-round true action and has 
abundant endurance, he is almost certainly a 
profitable investment. This is the kind of light 
horse which the market wants and will pay for. If 
of the roadster type, he sells well as a driver; if 
more on the heavy harness order, as a carriage 
horse. 

"The occurrence of trotting bred horses of the 
finest conformation is by no means uncommon ; it 
is so frequent, indeed, that these animals supply 



170 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

not only the demand for roadsters, but the prin- 
cipal part of the fine city trade in carriage horses, 
and are conspicuous winners at the horse shows. 
The demand for such horses has been so keen 
that dealers have resorted to the pernicious prac- 
tice of buying mature stallions, many of them 
valuable breeders, and castrating them to be sold 
later as carriage horses. The famous Lord Bril- 
liant, three times winner of the Waldorf-Astoria 
gig cup at Madison Square Garden, is a notable 
instance of this practice; Lonzie, a noted Chicago 
show horse, is another, and the horse purchased 
for the department experiments (Carmon) nar- 
rowly escaped the same fate. This practice can 
not be too strongly condemned. There is reason 
to believe that if these stallions were used as the 
nucleus of a breed the type would in time become 
fixed and their blood be saved to the country. 
On the other hand, if steps are not taken to 
mould the blood of these horses into one breed, 
and preserve the blood lines which produce them, 
an irreparable loss to the industry will result. The 
first step should be to select foundation stock 
strictly according to type; the next to study the 



THE GOVERNMENT AS A BREEDER 171 

lines of breeding which produce these horses. To 
a certain extent they are accidents of breeding, 
but there is Httle doubt that certain f amiHes show 
a greater tendency in this direction than others. 
For example, the descendants of Alexander's Ab- 
dallah, Harrison Chief, the Morgans and the 
Clay family have been more or less notable in this 
respect. Further, certain sires are known to pro- 
duce handsome and marketable horses with 
regularity. 

** In view of these facts, the department decid- 
ed to undertake the development of a breed of 
carriage horses on an American foundation as an 
interesting and important problem for solution. If 
successful it will show that we can develop our 
own breeding stock of horses in this country; it 
will make light horse breeding less a lottery than 
it is at present, and will at the same time provide 
breeding animals which can be used profitably on 
the lighter horses of the country. 

"After a thorough search the department has 
purchased as foundation stock eighteen mares 
and one stallion. In addition, it can command 
the services of additional stallions if desired. The 



172 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

instructions of the purchasing board allowed con- 
siderable latitude, but it was required to select 
strictly according to type. Hereditary unsound- 
ness was regarded as a disqualification. Pedigree 
was not considered, so far as registration was 
concerned, but the board required evidence to be 
submitted showing that the animals purchased 
were from parents and ancestors of like type, 
thus insuring blood lines that would breed rea- 
sonably true. Speed, while not ignored, was not 
made an essential. Life, spirit, and energy, with 
moderate speed, were considered, and, while con- 
formation was not sacrificed to speed, speed with 
conformation and good action was regarded as an 
advantage. 

"The type for mares was one standing about 
15.3 hands, weighing 1100 to 1150 pounds, bay, 
brown or chestnut in color, with stylish head and 
neck, full made body, deep ribs, straight back, 
strong loin, straight, full croup, muscular fore- 
arms, quarters and lower thighs; good all-round 
Was insisted upon. Any tendency to pace or mix 
gaits was regarded as grounds for disqualifica- 
tion. In some cases mares of more than 15.3 



THE GOVERNMENT AS' A BREEDER 173 

hands were purchased and in others they were 
less than this. All, however, conformed closely to 
type. Some of the mares are in foal; the rest will 
be bred this spring. 

"The ancestors of six mares purchased in 
Wyoming have been bred for five or six genera- 
tions in that state, the band having been started 
by means of an importation of horses from the 
Central West which was largely Morgan stock. 
On this stock Thoroughbred and Standard sires 
have been used, and the herd has been developed 
more to produce a horse suitable for carriage pur- 
poses than one which had speed characteristics. 
Some of the six have been exhibited at the New 
York Horse Show, and the owner of the ranch 
maintains a stable near New York City, where he 
sends his surplus from year to year to be finished 
for the fine city trade. 

" The search for a stallion to head the stud was 
the most difficult of all. An almost unlimited 
number of trotting horses suitable to get good 
carriage horses were recommended to the depart- 
ment, but on investigation it would be found that 
they were deficient in some respect and could not 



174 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

be considered. A horse was finally selected 
which was among the first suggested — Car- 
mon 32907, American Trotting Horse Register, 
16 hands, weighing 1200 pounds in fair con- 
dition, bay with black points and no white 
markings, bred by Norman J. Coleman, of St. 
Louis. 

"The points of Carmon's conformation which 
deserve special mention are his head and neck 
and hind quarters. His forehead is broad and 
full, with a straight nose and face; full, expres- 
sive eyes and well-carried ears. The neck is 
clean, muscular, and well arched. In the hind 
quarters special attention should be directed 
to the straight, broad croup and the mus- 
cular quarters and lower thighs. The horse has 
an abundance of bone and substance, but am- 
ple quality at the same time. His action is ex- 
cellent. 

*' A study of Carmon's pedigree shows that it is 
not a particularly fashionable one from the 
standpoint of the man who is breeding solely for 
speed. This is a pedigree from which one might 
expect a horse of excellent conformation. Robert 



THE GOVERNMENT AS A BREEDER 175 

McGregor, for example, was a horse with espe- 
cially well-developed hind quarters and this char- 
acteristic is seen in his sons and grandsons, as 
shown by Cresceus and Carmon. Abdallah XV 
was a horse with a particularly attractive head 
and neck. The frequency with which the Abdal- 
lah cross appears in Carmon's pedigree and 
the presence of Morgan, Mambrino Chief and 
Clay blood readily explains where this horse 
gets his handsome head and neck and his 
full quarters and stifles. These families have 
produced some of our handsomest horses. Their 
blood makes up nineteen-sixty-fourths of Car- 
mon's pedigree. 

"The small percentage of pacing blood is 
worthy of particular notice. Further, the promi- 
nent trotting sires in it have produced more trot- 
ters than pacers, and Robert McGregor, Abdal- 
lah XV, and Ethan Allen are noteworthy for the 
small number of pacers sired by them or pro- 
duced by their sons and daughters. This is so 
small that they may be regarded strictly as 
sires of trotters. Abdallah XV and Ethan 
Allen sired no pacers, and of the immediate 



176 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

get of Robert McGregor less than ten per cent 
are pacers."* 

I need not explain to readers of this book that 
I do not entirely agree with Dr. Salmon in his 
views of the American trotting horse. But in the 
main I do agree with him in the selection of his 

*U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

Bureau of Animal Industry 

local office 

John Gilmer Speed, Fort Collins, Colo., June 12, 1905. 

New York, N. Y. 

Dear Sir: — Your favor of May 24 has been referred to me for reply. 
Will say that we now have 19 brood mares and a stallion in our breeding 
stud here and as you probably have learned, our object is to establish a 
type of American carriage horses eventually. We will found a stud book 
for this type of horses in America and we hope to so foster and develop 
this type of horses in America as to make them par excellence as a heavy 
harness horse. The mares that we have secured range in weight fom 1050 
to upwards of 1280 pounds. They are from 15.2 to 16.1 hands in height 
and are without exception high headed with superb action, of fine quality 
and while not noted for speed, can trot a mile in approximately three min- 
utes and do it in a wonderfully easy and graceful manner, showing great 
style and finish. They are all bred from the American trotter foundation, 
and as far as possible of Morgan blood. We were careful to secure nothing 
but straight trotting bred stock, as we wish to eradicate the pacing charac- 
teristic from our horses. As you are aware, the Government and the Colo- 
rado Agricultural College are co-operating in this work. The Grovermnent 
is furnishing part of the funds and the College has taken charge of and is 
directing the work. 

Trusting that this information is satisfactory, I am. 
Yours very truly, 

W. L. Carlyle. 

Expert in charge. 



THE GOVERNMENT AS A BREEDER 177 

mares. The stallion used to be known in the 
horse-show rings as Lawson's Glorious Thunder 
Cloud. He never struck me as anything at all out 
of the common and I am astonished at his selec- 
tion. He was a good wheeler in a four-in-hand, 
but that was all. In single harness he never won in 
any ordinary class at any important show. He 
seemed to me to lack quality and to be lacking in 
many of the things for which Dr. Salmon gives 
him praise. I trust, however, he will prove a bet- 
ter sire than he was a show horse, for the need for 
carriage horses is great; then it would be a great 
pity for this first official experiment to turn out 
badly. It will be watched with peculiar interest. 
But I wish Dr. Salmon had selected as his stallion 
a horse that was in blood and conformation simi- 
lar to Clay-Kismet. 



CHAPTER TEN 

FOREIGN HORSES OF VARIOUS KINDS 

For draught purposes there have been a great 
many foreign horses brought here, and they have 
served an excellent purpose. I suspect indeed 
that if we had a record of the Percherons, Clydes- 
dales, and Shire horse that have been brought into 
America for the purpose of breeding heavy horses 
for trucking, that the number would exceed the 
Thoroughbreds that have been im orted for the 
improvement of that special type. We had no 
heavy horses of our own, and as there was a con- 
stant demand for draught horses it was inevitable 
that breeders should go for stock where that 
stock had been brought to the highest perfection. 
To us it seemed that the French horses, the Per- 
cherons,* were best adapted for our use. And 

♦Mr. Walters of Baltimore, began importing Percherons to America 
in 1866 and kept it up for twenty years. He translated the work of 

178 



FOREIGN HORSES OF VARIOUS KINDS 179 

though many have been brought here, it is not 
Hkely that the generahty of Americans know the 
pure bred Percherons. But all of us are familiar 
with Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair." The models 
of the horses in this stirring and beautiful picture 
were Percherons, and nearly all of them stallions. 
The French, and other Latins besides, have a 
fondness for using stallions in ordinary work, and 
any day in Paris a visitor may see a long string of 
Percheron stallions drawing a heavy load as pla- 
cidly as geldings would do it. There is no reason 
why stallions should not be used more generally 
in this country. The prejudice against their use 
as saddle- and harness-horses no doubt arose when 
the business of a greater part of the country was 
transacted by travelers who needed to hitch their 
horses where other horses were also tethered. But 
in work where a groom or driver is always in 
charge of a horse the stallion may be used with 
much advantage to himself and satisfaction to his 
owner. 



M. du Hays on the Percheron and illustrated it with photographs of 
horses and mares of his own importation. It is one of the handsomest 
horse books ever published. 



180 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

The basic blood of these Percherons is Arab 
and Barb mixed with the blood of those heavy 
Norman horses that were used by the heavily- 
armed knights in the time when the lance, sword, 
and crossbow took the place in war now monop- 
olized entirely by rifles, balls and powder or other 
explosives. After securing the type the French 
have been so zealously aware of its value that 
they keep agents in Arabia always looking out for 
animals suitable to start a new and parellel snp- 
ply of this basic blood. These same agents are 
also on the lookout for horses to be used in the 
breeding of army horses. Few of the Percherons 
that are brought over here are used in actual 
work, but are kept on the breeding farms in Ohio, 
Illinois, and other places for the production of 
"graded draught horses," horses not quite so 
heavy as the Percheron, but heavier than any 
draught horses we previously had of our own 
breeding. The Percheron stallions are mated 
with heavy American mares and with "graded'* 
mares, and the produce sent to the great cities 
where the animals fetch highly satisfactory 
prices. Great care has to be exercised in making 



FOREIGN HORSES OF VARIOUS KINDS 181 

the cross between a Percheron and an American 
that the contrast shall not be too great between 
the members of the union. When it is too great 
the consequences are disastrous, and result in a 
misshapen beast with unrelated characteristics 
of each parent. This shows that the blood of the 
union has not blended harmoniously. But the 
men who are in the business of producing 
"graded draught horses" appear to know that 
business well as the horses sold are handsome, 
strong, and active, and well adapted for the 
work for which they were created. 

This is a business pretty sure to decrease rather 
rapidly. These graded horses are not the ideal 
farm horse, although on a large farm where there 
is a deal of hauling, they serve a very useful pur- 
pose. But in plowing or in other work over soft 
ground they are too heavy. The city is the place 
for these horses. And year by year the heavy haul- 
ing will more and more be done by auto-cars. The 
auto-car for trucking is at present probably the 
most satisfactory achievement of the designers of 
horseless vehicles. When it is satisfactorily dem- 
onstrated that this mode of transferring freight, 



182 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

building material, and so on, is the cheapest way, 
then draught horses will be less and less in de- 
mand, and the French will lose one of their most 
profitable markets for her large, heavy, and sym- 
metrical horses. Still that may be a many years 
off, and if I were Dr. Hartman or Messrs. Dun- 
ham I should not just yet sacrifice my Percherons 
to any save the highest bidder. 

Before the era of the draught horse from 
France, those from England had a certain 
amount of popularity. That has long since passed 
away, and the Shires and Clydesdales in the 
United States are not proportionally so numerous 
as formerly. But they keep their popularity in 
Canada, where probably the farmers, being 
chiefly Britons, understand them better. That 
they should have been supplanted by the Perche- 
ron in the United States is no doubt due to the 
fact that the Oriental blood in the French horse 
makes that blood more assimilative with other 
strains. The French coach horse is brought over 
here to an extent for experimental use, and the 
Cleveland Bays formerly were brought quite fre- 
quently. Both, no doubt, have had temporary in- 



FOREIGN HORSES OF VARIOUS KINDS 183 

fluences on the American stock in the locaHties 
where these horses were in the stud, but I know of 
no type that has been influenced by them to any 
great extent. 

The Orlof trotting horse of Russia is one of 
the most interesting horses in Europe, and was 
created by Count Alexis Orlof-Tchestmensky, 
who began his work during the reign of Peter III, 
in the last half of the eighteenth century. As there 
has been an effort to make this type popular in 
America, it may be interesting to record how 
Count Orlof went about his work to secure a re- 
producing type of animals that resemble each 
other as much as the puppies in a litter of fox ter- 
riers. In 1775 he imported from Arabia a stallion 
named Smetanka, and bred this horse to a Dan- 
ish mare. The produce was Polkan who sired in 
1784 Barrs out of a Dutch mare. Barrs is looked 
upon as the founder of the Orlof type. Barrs sired 
Lubeznoy out of a mare that was sired by an 
Arab out of a Mecklenberg mare; Barrs also sired 
Dobroy out of a Thoroughbred English mare; 
also Lebed out of a mare by Felkerzamchek out 
of a Mecklenberg mare, Felkerzamchek being by 



184 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

Smetanka out of a Thoroughbred Enghsh mare. 
Now all the Orlofs must descend from Smetanka 
and Barrs through the three stallions named. 
This mixture was crossed and recrossed until it 
became homogeneous, and so the Russian noble 
had created a type. 

In 1772 he had in his stud the following horses : 

Arab 12 stallions and 10 mares 

Persian 3 " " 2 

EngUsh 20 " " 32 

Dutch 1 " •• 8 

Meeklenberg 1 " " 5 

Danish 1 " "3 

Miscellaneous 9 " " 17 

He developed his type before his death in 1810, 
and his widow kept up the same method of 
breeding until 1845, when she sold the horses to 
the Russian government. These horses have been 
of vast service in Russia, where even in the 
eighteenth century the steppes were filled with 
wild, scrubby but hardy little horses to such an 
extent that even the poorest peasant could own 
one or two. The Orlofs have done much to 
improve these steppe ponies and it is upon them 



FOREIGN HORSES OF VARIOUS KINDS 185 

that the Russian cavalry largely depends for 
remounts. 

The fastest of these trotters can go a 2.20 clip, 
but I have heard that a rate like this can be main- 
tained only a short while. They are not so sym- 
metrical as our Morgans or Clay-Arabians, but 
they have immensely more substance than the 
Standard Bred Trotters. I do not see how they can 
find any very useful place in this country. We 
could from our own stock quickly develop a better 
looking coach horse, and I believe we will do it, 
but never until we keep in mind that type is 
nine-tenths of any horse breeding battle that is 
ever won. 

The English Hackneys at one period promised 
to be popular in this country. This popularity 
was stimulated by fashion, and the English 
breeders did not fail to take advantage of the fad 
that possessed some Americans of wealth. The 
Hackney comes from the Dutch horses by way of 
the Norfolk trotter. He is a horse of substance 
and easily acquires a high step with much knee 
action. In the show ring he is exhibited after the 
English fashion and makes a very lively picture. 



186 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

But his step is not light. He pounds the ground as 
though he wished the earth to tremble, and the 
Chinese feel his tread on the other side of the 
world. He has no very fitting place here, no more 
than the Orlof, either in his purity or as a cross 
with our own horses. We can easily do without 
him, and accomplish the creation of heavy har- 
ness and coach horse without the assistance of 
this English type. Originally in England the 
Hackney was a knock-a-bout horse, good under 
the saddle and in harness; but he has been bred 
up to large size and very heavy weight. Some of 
the American breeders of hackney ten or fifteen 
years ago when they went to England for stock to 
breed from paid such prices that the English 
laughed with delight, for they never dreamed of 
such a market at home. The fad is fastiy dying 
out, and it is likely that in a few years there will 
not be opportunity even in the show rings for 
their exhibition. As they are deficient in courage 
and staying qualities, this will not be a bad 
result of lack of popularity. 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 

THE BREEDING OF MULES 

On the first day of January, 1905, we had in the 
United States 2,888,710 mules with a taxable 
value of $251,840,378. This shows how extensive 
an industry mule-breeding is, and also what an 
important place the mule occupies in the econ- 
omy of the country. The mule is an ideal farm 
animal. They would find it hard to get along with- 
out him on the plantations in the South. The 
negro is the poorest horseman in the world. As a 
groom he is careless and neglectful. A horse 
must be attended to or he will get ill and die. 
The mule seiems, if not to thrive on neglect, at 
least not seriously to deteriorate. On many of the 
Southern plantations mules never know either 
currycomb or brush during all their long lives. 
And they live to a great age. I have never seen 
any statement based on carefully ascertained sta- 

187 



188 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

tistics at to the comparative length life of the 
horse and mule, but I am persuaded, from my 
own observation that on an average a mule lives 
twenty-five per cent longer. And there is pretty 
nearly as much work in an old mule as in a young 
one. They can also be put to hard work sooner 
than a horse. So the working life of a mule is 
lengthened at both ends. Moreover, they can sub- 
sist on what would be starvation for a horse. 

If mules were bred at all in America in the Col- 
onial era it was to a very limited extent. But after 
the Revolution they were bred a little, and George 
Washington was the man who encouraged this 
new industry. In 1786, before his election to the 
Presidency, Washington accepted from the King 
of Spain the present of a large Spanish Jack. He 
called the jack Royal Gift, and thus advertised 
his services in a Philadelphia paper: 

" Royal Gift — A Jack Ass of the first race in 
the Kingdom of Spain will cover mares and jen- 
nies (she asses) at Mount Vernon the ensuing 
spring. The first for ten, the latter for fifteen 
pounds the season. Royal Gift is four years old, 
is between 14 J and 15 hands high, and will grow. 



THE BREEDING OF MULES 189 

it is said, until he is twenty or twenty-five years of 
age. He is very bony and stout made, of a dark 
colour with light belly and legs. The advantages, 
which are many, to be derived from the propaga- 
tion of asses from this animal (the first of the 
kind that was ever in North America), and the 
usefulness of mules bred from a Jack of his size, 
either for the road or team, are well known to 
those who are acquainted with this mongrel 
race. For the information of those who are not, it 
may be enough to add, that their great strength, 
longevity, hardiness, and cheap support, give 
them a preference of horses that is scarcely to be 
imagined. As the Jack is young, and the General 
has many mares of his own to put to him, a limited 
number only will be received from others, and 
these entered in the order they are offered. Let- 
ters directed to the subscriber, by Post or other- 
wise, under cover to the General, will be entered 
on the day they are received, till the number is 
completed, of which the writers shall be informed 
to prevent trouble or expense to them. 

"John Fairfax, Overseer. 
"February 23, 1786." 

Washington believed in mules and in the in- 
ventory of live stock in his will made in 1799, 



190 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

mention is made of two covering jacks, three 
young ones, ten she asses, forty-two working 
mules, and fifteen younger ones. It was a much 
later period, however, before mules were exten- 
sively bred in the United States. With the excep- 
tion of Royal Gift, it is likely that the jacks 
brought from Europe were rather inferior. But in 
1832, Henry Clay imported two pure-blood Cata- 
lan asses, a jack and a jenny. They were landed 
in Maryland, and there the jenny had a foal. 
This foal was called Warrior. This jack was fif- 
teen hands high, and he became a great ass pro- 
genitor in Kentucky. The jennies there at that 
time were not well bred, but mongrels, mostly a 
light shade of blue, with gray, buff and grizzly 
hair, nearly as stiff as hog bristles, generally with 
a colored stripe across the shoulders and down the 
back, ewe-necked, flat in the rib, low carriage, 
and heavy headed, entirely destitute of any good 
quality except hardihood and ability to get a liv- 
ing where any other animal, save a goat, would 
have starved to death. With such jennies began 
the first effort to improve the race in Kentucky, 
and they flocked to Warrior in droves. He seem- 



THE BREEDING OF MULES 191 

ed to cross advantageously with them, just as the 
Cashmere goat crosses on the common hairy 
goat. His progeny seemed rapidly to lose the lead- 
ing traits of their dams, and to inherit in a re- 
markable degree the color and outward charac- 
teristics of their sire. Four years later Dr. Davis 
imported in South Carolina another Catalan jack. 
He was 16 hands high and of great weight. This 
jack. Mammoth, was mated to the young War- 
rior jennies then just maturing, thus making the 
second cross of pure blood, and upon these two 
crosses rest to-day the breeding of the race of 
jacks known throughout the United States as the 
Kentucky Jack. These Kentucky jacks are still 
popular, and last year the British Government 
bought a number of them to take to India. 

Mr. J. L. Jones, of Columbia, Tennessee, is a 
recognized authority on mule breeding, and I pre- 
fer to give my readers his counsel in a matter with 
which he is better acquainted than I am. 

He says : 

" There are two kinds or classes of the mule, 
viz., one the produce of the male ass or jack and 
the mare ; and the other, the offspring of the stal- 



192 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

lion and female ass. The cross between the jack 
and the mare is properly called the mule, while 
the other, the produce of the stallion and female 
ass, is designated a hinny. The mule is the more 
valuable animal of the two, having more size, 
finish, bone, and, in fact, all the requisites which 
make that animal so much prized as a useful 
burden-bearing animal. The hinny is small in 
size, and is wanting in the qualities requisite to a 
great draught animal. This hybrid is supposed 
not to breed, as no instance is known to us in 
which a stallion mule has been prolific, although 
he seems to be physically perfect, and shows great 
fondness for the female, and serves readily. 
There are instances on record where the female 
has produced a foal, but these are rare. 

"The mule partakes of the several character- 
istics of both its parents, having the head, ear, 
foot, and bone of the jack, while in height and 
body it follows the mare. It has the voice of 
neither, but is between the two, and more nearly 
resembles the jack. It possesses the patience, en- 
durance, and sure-footedness of the jack, and the 
vigor, strength, and courage of the horse. It is 



THE BREEDING OF MULES 19S 

easily kept, very hardy, and no path is too pre- 
cipitous or mountain trail too diflBcult for one of 
them with its burden. The mule enjoys compara- 
tive immunity from disease, and lives to a com- 
paratively great age. The writer knows of a mule 
in Middle Tennessee that, when young, was a 
beautiful dapple gray, but is now thirty years old, 
and is as white as snow. This mule is so faithful 
and true, and has broken so many young things 
to work by his side, that he bears the name of 
* Counsellor. ' The last time he was seen by the 
writer he was in a team attached to a reaper, 
drawing at a rate sufficient to cut fifteen acres of 
grain per day. 

*' Kentucky mules are showy, upheaded, fine- 
haired animals, their extra qualities being attrib- 
utable to the strong. Thoroughbred blood in the 
greater part of their dams. The same may be said 
of Tennessee, where it is thought the climactic in- 
fluences produce a little better, smoother, and 
finer hair, coupled with early maturity, which 
qualities are much prized by an expert buyer. 

"The mules in Missouri, lUinois, Indiana, and 
some of the so-called Northwestern states, have 



194 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

large bone, foot, body, and substance, and pos- 
sess great strength, but they are wanting in that 
high style, finish, and fine hair that characterize the 
produce of some of the states further south, and 
are longer in maturing. Mule-breeding in these 
states is one of the most important branches of in- 
dustry, and is supposed to date back prior to 1787. 

"There is no kind of labor to which a horse can 
be put for which a mule may not be made to an- 
swer, while there are many for which mules are 
more peculiarly adapted than horses ; and among 
the rest, that of mining, where the mule is used, 
and many of them need no drivers. They can en- 
dure more hardships than the horse, can live on 
less, and do more work on the same feed than 
any other beast of burden we use in America. 

"A cotton-planter in the South would feel un- 
willing to raise his crop with horses for motive 
power. The horse and the labor of the cotton belt 
could not harmonize, while the negro is at home 
with the mule. 

**A mule may be worked until completely 
fagged, when a good feed and a night's rest will 
enable it to go; but it is not so with a horse. 



THE BREEDING OF MULES 195 

"The mule being better adapted for carrying 
burdens, for the plough, the wagon, building of 
railroads, and, in fact, all classes of heavy labor, 
let us see how it compares with the noble animal, 
the horse, in cost of maintenance. 

" From repeated experiments that have come 
under my observation in the past twenty-five 
years, I have found that three mules, 15 hands 
high, that were constantly worked, consumed 
about as much forage as two ordinary-sized 
horses worked in the same way, and while the 
mules were fat the horses were only in good work- 
ing order. Although a mule will live and work on 
very low fare, he also responds as quickly as any 
animal to good feed and kind treatment. True, it 
is charged that the mule is vicious, stubborn, 
and slow, but an experience in handling many 
mules on the farm has failed to sustain the charge, 
save in few instances, and in these the propen- 
sities were brought about by bad handling. They 
are truer pullers than the horse, and move more 
quickly under the load. Their hearing and vision 
are better than the horse. The writer has used 
them in all the different branches of farming, 



196 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

from the plough to the carriage and buggy, and 
thinks they are less liable to become frightened 
and start suddenly; and if they do start, they usu- 
ally stop before damage is done, while the horse 
seldom stops until completely freed. The mule is 
more steady while at work than the horse, and is 
not so liable to become exhausted, and often be- 
comes so well instructed as to need neither driver 
nor lines. 

" In the town in which the writer lives, a cotton 
merchant, who is also in the grocery trade, owned 
a large sorrel mule, 16 hands high, that he worked 
to a dray to haul goods and cotton to the depot, 
half a mile from his business house. This mule 
often went the route alone, and was never known 
to strike anything, and what was more remark- 
able, would back up at the proper place with the 
load, there being one place to unload groceries 
and another for cotton. 

" They are also good for light harness, many of 
them being very useful buggy animals, traveling 
a day's journey equal to some horses. The writer 
obtained one from a firm of jack breeders in his 
vicinity, that was bred by them, as an experiment, 



THE BREEDING OF MULES 197 

being out of a Thoroughbred mare by a royally 
bred jack. She is 16 hands high, as courageous as 
most any horse. In traveling a distance of thirty- 
two miles, this mule, with two men and the bag- 
gage, made it, as the saying goes, ' under a pull,' 
in four hours, and when arrived at the journey's 
end seemed willing to go on. 

" We do not wish to be understood as underrat- 
ing the horse, for it is a noble animal, well suited 
for man's wants, but for burden-bearing and 
drudgery is more than equaled by the patient, 
faithful, hardy mule. 

*' There are two kinds of jacks — the mule- 
breeding and the ass-breeding jack, the latter 
being used chiefly in breeding jacks for stock 
purposes. It is only with the mule-breeding jack 
that we will deal. 

*' A good mule- jack ought to be not less than 15 
hands high, and have all of the weight, head, ear, 
foot, bone, and length that can be obtained, 
coupled with a broad chest, wide hips, and with 
all the style attainable with these qualities. 
Smaller jacks are often fine breeders, and pro- 
duce some of our best mules, and when bred to 



198 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

the heavier, larger class of mares show good re- 
sults, but as *like produces like,' the larger jacks 
are preferable. 

" Black, with light points, is the favorite color 
for a jack, but many of our gray, blue, and even 
white jacks have produced good mules. In fact, 
some of the nicest, smoothest, red-sorrel mules 
have been the product of these off -colored jacks; 
but the black jacks get the largest proportion of 
good-colored colts from all colored mares. 

" The breed of the jack is also to be looked into. 
There are now so many varieties of jacks in the 
United States, all of which have merits, that it will 
be well to examine and see what jack has shown 
the best results. We have the Catalonian, the 
Andalusian, the Maltese, the Majorca, the Italian, 
and the Poitou — all of which are imported — and 
the native jack. Of all the imported, the Catalo- 
nian is the finest type of animal, being a good 
black, with white points, of fine style and action, 
and from 14^ to 15 hands high, rarely 16 hands, 
with a clean bone. The Andalusian is about the 
same type of jack as the Catalonian having, 
perhaps, a little more weight and bone, but are 



THE BREEDING OF MULES 199 

all off-colors. The Maltese is smaller than the 
Catalonian, rarely being over 14J hands high, but 
is nice and smooth. The Majorca is the largest 
of the imported jacks, the heaviest in weight, 
bone, head, and ear, and frequently grows to 16 
hands. These are raised in the rich island of Ma- 
jorca, in the Mediterranean Sea. While they excel 
in weight and size, they lack in style, finish and 
action. The Italian is the smallest of all the im- 
ported jacks, being usually from 13 to 14 hands 
high, but having good foot, bone, and weight, and 
some of them make good breeders. The Poitou is 
the latest importation of the jack, and is little 
known in the United States. He is imported from 
France, and is reported to be the sire of some of 
the finest mules in his native land. These jacks 
have long hair about the neck, ears, and legs, and 
are, in some respects, to the jack race what the 
Clydesdale is to other horses. He is heavy set, has 
good foot and bone, fine head and ear, and of 
good size, being about 15 hands high. 

" The native jack, as a class, is heavier in body, 
having a larger bone and foot than the imported, 
and shows in his entire make-up the result of the 



200 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

limestone soil and the grasses common in this 
country. He is of all colors, having descended 
from all the breeds of imported jacks. But the 
breeders of this country, seeing the fancy of their 
customers for the black jack with light points, 
have discarded all other colors in selecting their 
jacks, and the consequence is that a large propor- 
tion of the jacks in the stud now, for mares, are of 
this color. 

"The native jack, being acclimated, seems to 
give better satisfaction to breeders of mules than 
any other kind. From observation and experience 
it is believed that our native jacks, with good im- 
ported crosses behind them, will sire the mules 
best suited to the wants of those who use them in 
this country, and will supply the market with 
what is desired by the dealers. The colts by this 
class of jacks are stronger in make-up, having 
better body, with more length, larger head and 
ear, more foot and bone, combined with style 
equal to the colts of the imported jacks. 

" While many fine mules are sired by imported 
jacks, this is not to be understood as meaning 
that imported jacks do not get good foals, yet, 



THE BREEDING OF MULES 201 

taken as a class, we think that the mule by the 
native jack is superior to any other class. This 
conclusion is borne out by an experience and ob- 
servation of some years, and by many of the best 
breeders and dealers in the United States. 

" As the mule partakes very largely in its body 
and shape of its mother, it is necessary that care 
should be taken in selecting the dam. Many sup- 
pose that when a mare becomes diseased and un- 
fit for breeding to the horse, then she is fit to 
breed to mules. This is a sad mistake, for a good, 
growing, sound colt must have good, sound sire 
and dam. 

"The jack may be ever so good, yet the result 
will be a disappointment unless the mare is good, 
sound, and properly built for breeding. First, she 
should be sound and of good color; black, bay, 
brown, or chestnut is preferred. Her good color is 
needed to help to give the foals proper color, and 
this is a matter of no small importance. 

" This should not be understood as ignoring the 
other colors, for some of the best mules ever seen 
were the produce of gray or light-colored mares, 
as many dealers and breeders will attest. The 



202 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

mare should be well bred; that is, she would give 
better results by having some good crosses. By all 
means let her have a cross of Thoroughbred, say 
one-quarter, supplemented with strong crosses of 
some of the larger breeds, and the balance of the 
breeding may be made up of the better class of 
the native stock. The mare should have good 
length, large, well-rounded barrel, good head, 
long neck, good, broad, flat bone, broad chest, 
wide between the hips, and good style. 

"Having selected the sire and the dam, the 
next thing is to produce the colt. The sire, if well 
kept and in good condition, is ready for business, 
but not so with the mare. The dam is to be in sea- 
son; that is, in heat. Before being bred, to prevent 
accidents, the mare should be hobbled or pitted. 
Having taken this precaution, the jack may be 
brought out, and both will be ready for service. 
Care should be taken not to overserve the jack, 
as he should not be allowed to serve over two 
mares a day. 

"The mare, after being served, may be put to 
light work, or put upon some quiet pasture by 
herself for several days until she passes out of 



THE BREEDING OF MULES 203 

season, when the may be turned out with other 
stock to run until the eighteenth day, when she 
should be taken up to be teased by a horse, to 
ascertain if she be in season, and if so, she should 
be bred again. Some breeders think the ninth, 
some the twelfth, and some the fifteenth day 
after service is the proper day to tease, but ob- 
servation has taught me that the best results 
come from the eighteenth-day plan. After she 
becomes impregnated she should have good treat- 
ment; light work will not hurt her, but care 
should be taken not to over-exert. She should 
have good, nutritious grass if she runs out and 
is not worked, but if worked she should be 
well fed on good feed. The foal will be due in 
about 333 days. As the time approaches for foal- 
ing, the mare should be put in a quiet place, 
away from other stock, until the foal is dropped. 
She will not need any extra attention, as a rule, 
but should be looked after to see that everything 
goes right. 

** After the foal comes, it will not hurt the mare 
or colt for the dam to do light work, provided she 
is well fed on good, nutritious food. Should she 



204 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

not be worked and is on good grass, and fed 
lightly on grain, the colt will grow finely, if the 
mare gives plenty of milk ; if she does not the foal 
should be taught to eat such feed as is most suit- 
able. 

"The colt should be well cared for at all times, 
and particularly while following its mother, for 
the owner may want to sell at weaning time, 
which is four months old, and its inches then will 
fix the price. Good mules, at weaning time, usual- 
ly bring from $75 to $90, and sometimes as high 
as $100. 

" Feeders, dealers, and buyers prefer the mare 
mule to the horse, and they sell more readily. 
The females mature earlier, are plumper and 
rounder of body, and fatten more readily than 
the male. 

In weaning the colt, much is accomplished by 
proper treatment preparatory to this trying event 
in the mule's life. It should be taught to eat while 
following its mother, so that when weaned it will 
at once know how to subsist on that which is fed 
to it. The best way to wean is to take several colts 
and place them in a close barn, with plenty of 



. THE BREEDING OF MULES 205 

good, soft feed, such as bran and oats mixed, 
plenty of sound, sweet hay, and, in season, cut- 
grass, remembering at all times that nothing can 
make up for want of pure water in the stable. 
Many may be weaned together properly. After they 
have remained in the stable for several days they 
maybe turned on good, rich pasture. Do not forget 
to feed, as this is a trying time. The change from a 
milk to a dry diet is severe on the colt. They may 
all be huddled in a barn together, as they seldom 
hurt each other. Good, rich clover pastures are 
fine for mules at this age, but if they are to be 
extra fine, feed them a little grain all the while. 

"There is little variety in the feed until the 
mules are two years old, at which time they are 
very easily broken. If halter-broken as they grow 
up, all there is to do in breaking one is to put on a 
harness, and place the young animal beside a 
broken mule, and go to work. When it is thor- 
oughly used to the harness, the mule is already 
broken. Light work in the spring, when the mule 
is two years old, will do no hurt, but, in the 
opinion of many breeders and dealers, make it 
better, provided it is carefully handled and fed. 



206 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

"How to fatten the mule is one of the most 
important parts of mule - raising, for when the 
mule is offered to a buyer, he will at once 
ask : ' Is he fat ? ' and fat goes far in effecting 
a sale. A rough, poor mule could hardly be 
sold, while if it is fat, the buyer will take it 
because it is fat. 

"The mule should be placed in the barn with 
plenty of room, and not much light, about the 1st 
of November, before it is two years old, and fed 
about twelve ears of (Indian) corn per day, and 
all the nice, well-cured clover hay it will eat, and 
there kept until about the 1st of April. Then, in 
the climate of Middle Tennessee, the clover is 
good, and the mule may be turned out on it, and 
the corn increased to about twenty ears or more 
per day. They will eat more grain, without fear of 
' firing ; V that is, heating so as to cause scratches, 
as the green clover removes all danger from this 
source. During the time they run on the clover 
they eat less hay, but this should always be kept 
by them. About the 1st of May the clover blooms, 
and is large enough to cut, in the latitude of Ten- 
nessee. The mules should be placed, then, in the 



THE BREEDING OF MULES 207 

barn, with a nice smooth lot attached, and plenty 
of pure water. A manger should be built in the lot, 
four feet wide by four feet high, and long enough 
to accommodate the number of mules it is de- 
sired to feed. This should be covered over by a 
shed high enough for the mule to stand under, to 
prevent the clover from wilting. The clover 
should be cut while the dew is on, as this pre- 
serves the aroma, and they like it better. While 
this is going on in the lot, the troughs and racks 
in the barns should be supplied with all the shell- 
ed corn (maize) the mules will eat. ' Why shell it ? * 
some one will ask. Because they eat more of 
it, and relish it. A valuable addition at all times 
consists of either short-cut sheaf oats, or shelled 
oats, and bran, if not too expensive. 

"From this time the mule should be pressed 
with all the richest of feed, if it is desired to make 
it what is termed in mule parlance, 'hog fat.* 
Ground barley, shelled oats, bran, and shelled 
corn, should be given, not forgetting to salt regu- 
larly all the while, nor omitting the hay and green 
corn blades. While all those are essential, oats 
and bran, although at some places expensive, are 



208 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

regarded as the ne plus ultra for fattening a mule, 
and giving a fine suit of hair. Be sure to keep the 
barn well bedded, for if the hair becomes soiled 
from rolling it lowers the value, as the mule is 
much estimated for its fine coat. 

*'The grain makes the flesh, and the green 
stuff keeps the system of the mule cool, and bal- 
ances the excess of carbonaceous elements in the 
grain fed. 

"The manner of feeding, if properly carried 
out, with the proper foundation to start with, will 
make mules, two years old past, weigh from 
1150 pounds to 1350 pounds by the 1st of Septem- 
ber, at which time the market opens. 

"A feeder of eighteen years' experience claims 
that oats and bran will put on more fine flesh in a 
given time, coupled with a smoother, glossier coat 
of hair, than any other known feed. The ex- 
perienced feeder follows this method from wean- 
ing till two years old. " 

In war the mule is invaluable both as a pack ani- 
mal and for army trains. He can stand the hard 
usage of army life much better than horses. In our 
great Civil War they were used very extensively. 



THE BREEDING OF MULES 209 

In his book General Grant told of a certain army 
chaplain who always took an active part in the 
battles. On one occasion the roads were blocked 
up with mule-drawn trains, and it was most de- 
sirable for them to get out of the way. The chap- 
lain lent a hand to the teamsters. Now mule- 
drivers use language more forceful and pictur- 
esque than pure or elegant. Well, the parson *' cus- 
sed and swore, " with the rest of them, and help- 
ed straighten out the tangle. That evening the 
General thanked the chaplain, but said: "How 
do you reconcile the language you used with your 
conscience ? " '* Oh,' ' answered the chaplain,* * do 
mules understand any other language .?" 



CHAPTER TWELVE 

HOW TO BUY A HORSE 

It is far from my purpose to give any advice on 
the purchasing of horses to professionals or to 
amateurs who know the subject thoroughly. The 
professional knows his business so well, or is apt 
to think that he does, that my advice would be 
almost an impertinence, while the amateur who 
thinks he knows is incapable of learning. It is, by 
the way, a most astonishing thing how few men 
there are who are willing to confess ignorance as 
to horses. A little experience makes them won- 
drous wise. I once heard of a reader for a great 
publishing house who "turned down" a treatise 
on the horse because "the writer did not know 
the subject sufficiently well." This reader, I 
learned on inquiry, had studied the subject thor- 
oughly, for one summer a friend lent him a polo 
pony which was under his constant observation 

210 



HOW TO BUY A HORSE 211 

for nearly three months. This conceit that we 
have in our knowledge of horses whets our appe- 
tite for gambling on horse-races, and makes the 
opportunity of the bookmakers to undo us much 
greater and surer. It also induces us to make un- 
wise purchases and then conclude that horses are 
delusions and snares while dealers are rogues of 
deepest dye. Only a few days before this page was 
written, I heard of a college professor who 
bought a pair of horses at a fancy price and with- 
out an examination from a veterinary, only to 
find after reaching his country place that one of 
the horses was blind. So, while I am sure that ad- 
vice is needed, I am not at all certain that it is in 
demand. 

We all recall the doggerel rule: 

" One white leg, inspect him; 
Two white legs, reject him; 
Three white legs, sell him to your foes; 
Four white legs, feed him to the crows ! " 

That is advice to which no attention should be 
paid at all, unless the markings be such that a 
person looking for a horse positively dislikes. 
And that is about the only rule I advise a person 



212 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

not to consider in buying a horse. Everything else 
should be looked over carefully, for pretty nearly 
everything about a horse has more or less im- 
portance, usually more than less. 

The first thing a prospective purchaser should 
determine is why he wants a horse, and what he 
wants to do with him. Then he should decide 
whether he means to buy the horse on his own 
judgment or on that of some one else. If he means 
to be his own judge he should go alone; if he 
means to have a friend select his horse he should 
let the friend go alone. But he should never take 
his friend along with him to give advice and assist 
in driving a bargain. This kind of thing is annoy- 
ing to a dealer, and tempts him to match his ex- 
perienced and hard-worked wit with that of the 
seldom-used judgment of the buyer. That the 
dealer will win in such a contest goes without say- 
ing. I have taken for granted that the buyer will 
go to a dealer for any advice of any kind is wasted 
upon one who would buy a horse from a friend, 
unless he coveted his friend's horse and wanted 
that particular animal from personal knowledge 
of him. 



HOW TO BUY A HORSE 213 

Horse dealers are frequently spoken of as un- 
conscionable rogues. And there is no doubt that 
many of them do lack the virtue of probity and 
straight speaking. But a reputable dealer in 
horses with an established business can be as fair 
as any other business man, and I have known 
many such. Such an horse dealer has a reputation 
to maintain that is as valuable to him as that of a 
banker is to him. If you will place confidence in 
him he is not apt to betray it, for he values his 
customer and knows that there will probably be 
other sales to make. 

But the dealers who advertise in the newspa- 
pers that they will sell from private stables horses 
worth $500 or $1000 for $100 or $200 are the 
pirates of the trade. They give one excuse or an- 
other why such immense bargains are offered, 
and they make many sales. They are really " con- 
fidence-men," and why the police authorities 
should permit them to continue in their thieving 
operations is one of the mysterious manifesta- 
tions of city life that I could never understand. It 
was from one of these rogues that the college pro- 
fessor I just mentioned bought his prize pair. 



214 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

Never on any account look for or even at any of 
these advertised bargains in a private stable. A 
good horse has a market value and a dealer 
knows it thoroughly. When he offers to sell below 
that value, you may depend upon it that he is try- 
ing to cheat you by imposing upon your igno- 
rance. Having determined what kind of a horse 
you want, and what kind of work you purpose 
doing with a horse, go to a dealer and tell him 
all about it just as you would to your lawyer or 
doctor. He will show you horses and quote prices. 
If the prices are higher than you care to pay tell 
him that also, and he will show you others. He 
usually begins with the higher-priced horses, un- 
less he "sizes you up" as lean of pocket-book. 
But in a large establishment the price you have 
fixed in your own mind is likely to be arrived at 
very quickly. Then you must determine whether 
the horse shown to you is of the quality you de- 
sire. But be not deceived by the hope that you 
can get a very superior and well-trained horse for 
very much less than he is worth. This can often be 
done with green horses. By green horses, I do not 
mean unbroken horses, but horses that have not 



HOW TO BUY A HORSE 215 

been educated and developed. A skilful horse- 
man, either rider or driver, will nearly always 
prefer a green horse because of the pleasure in 
training him, and also of the chance of securing a 
prize at a minimum of cost. But an inexperienced 
horseman will probably never make anything out 
of a green horse, so he had best not consider such. 
Having found a horse that seems to meet re- 
quirements, the horse should be tried and the re- 
putable dealer will give the buyer every oppor- 
tunity for such a trial. When the trial is satisfac- 
tory, the buyer should have him examined by a 
veterinary, and if sound the transaction should be 
closed. Warranties are not of much good. They 
cannot be enforced except through suits at law; 
and a lawsuit even when won would usually cost 
more than the loss on an unsatisfactory horse, if 
the horse were sent to the auction block immedi- 
ately. Then try again. To buy one bad horse is no 
reason whatever for discouragement. One of the 
Tattersalls said that to have one good horse in a 
lifetime is as much as a man should expect. 

The splendid specimens that we see in the 
show rings inspire us with the desire to have one 



216 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

or several of these, and as each show is followed 
by a sale there is our easy opportunity. But I am 
persuaded that to one not himself a horse-show 
exhibitor nothing is more unwise than to buy a 
horse-show winner. These horses are most high- 
ly keyed up and trained by most skilful hands. In 
the hands of one less skilful they rapidly deteri- 
orate and in the ordinary park and road work 
they lose a major part of that style which origi- 
nally inspired the purchase. This skill in hand- 
ling has made itself so manifest that even in the 
horse shows the managers have been obliged 
to exclude the dealers from many of the classes. 
There are professional horse-show exhibitors 
notwithstanding this exclusion of the dealers, 
and their horses are probably more unsafe 
to buy than those of the dealers themselves. 
No, the horse-show horse is for the horse-show 
exhibitor. 

Another discouraging thing about one's first 
horses is the illnesses which they contract. As fre- 
quently as not this is due to the inexperience of 
the new owner, or to the change of home and cli- 
mate. Dealers buying horses frequently have the 



HOW TO BUY A HORSE 217 

animals inoculated against cold and fever — 
shipper's fever, it is called. This should always be 
done as the result has been found to be most ex- 
cellent. "You can get no use out of a Kentucky 
horse for the first year," I have heard New York- 
ers say. That may have been their experience; 
but when treated with the proper serum before 
shipment they do not suffer to any extent with 
colds and influenza. There is one disease, how- 
ever, that I do not know how to provide against 
— nostalgia. The generality of horses are not 
very affectionate, for they are not very intelligent, 
being trained more by fear than anything else 
and going on in their work through custom. But 
they do love their homes, and that they should 
suffer from home-sickness until the satisfaction 
with the new environment wipes out the longing 
is inevitable. The homing instinct of a horse is 
very strong and also interesting. Take a horse 
ten or even twenty miles in a direction never 
traveled before, and then turn him towards 
home over a new route, and he knows it instantly 
and shows that he knows it by a quickened gait 
and a renewal of spirit. So these things should be 



218 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

taken into consideration with a new horse, and 
due allowance made for them. 

A man who has an establishment and keeps 
many horses has one very difficult problem. It is 
customary for the coachman to get commissions, 
whether the coachman has been consulted in the 
purchase or not. The dealers understand this, 
and add to the price of the horse what will have 
to be paid to the coachman. I have had dealers 
ask me plainly whether I kept a coachman to set- 
tle with. And once when I sold a horse to a dis- 
tinguished professional man in New York, he 
sent a check for $50 more than the agreed price, 
asking that that sum be given to the coachman as 
he did not want the horse lamed or put out of 
condition. This is a stable tradition that we have 
borrowed from England, and is a tyranny that 
should be suppressed not only by law but by cus- 
tom. I sold a horse recently to a gentleman at a 
price not at all above his value. His negro coach- 
man called at my house for his commission. I 
sent him away in short order and at once wrote 
his master a note telling of the visit and its ob- 
ject, and requesting him to pay his own servants. 



HOW TO BUY A HORSE 219 

If a man have leisure for travel, the bleeding 
farm is a good place to purchase a horse. At most 
of these farms the horses are green, but at some 
they are thoroughly trained before being offered 
for sale. But none of these horses are accustomed 
to the fearsome sights and sounds of the city. So I 
should advise none but skilful horsemen to go to 
the farms to make purchases. 

But the wisest course that an amateur can pur- 
sue is to take a loss quickly. Just as soon as you 
find that you do not want a horse, sell him. If 
there be a purchaser ready at hand, well and 
good; if not there is sure to be an auction block 
not far away. 



CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

THE STABLE AND ITS MANAGEMENT 

Badly-constructed, badly-kept, and badly- 
managed stables are the contributing causes to 
most of the illnesses that horses suffer from. As 
nine stables out of ten in America are bad in all 
these three regards, I am confirmed in the belief 
that horses are very hardy animals instead of the 
delicate creatures that we sometimes think they 
are. That so many of them should be equal to 
hard and continuous work considering the condi- 
tions that surround them when they are at home 
is really quite remarkable. Even on breeding 
farms, where it is the business of the proprietors 
to rear fine animals for sale, the stables more fre- 
quently than not are wretched barns not fit even 
for the lodgement of mules. This is the case in 
Kentucky, even in the Blue Grass region. In 
many of the stables there I have seen tons of 

220 



THE STABLE AND ITS MANAGEMENT 221 

manure, that were most valuable for fertilization, 
left in the stables for no other reason that I could 
fathom than that it seemed to be no one's bus- 
iness to take it away. "Why don't you spread it 
on the pastures, or use it on the ploughed fields ?" 
I asked one gentleman. " Oh, the ground does not 
need it," he replied. I did not like to go any fur- 
ther for fear of seeming intrusive. Then again I 
did not believe that a man who thought tilled 
ground even in the limestone enriched land of the 
Blue Grass section would not be better for stable 
manure would bother particularly about the ad- 
vantages of keeping stables clean. 

Stables should be light not dark. There is a no- 
tion as old as the hills that a stable should be a 
dark and somber place. There are those who still 
hold stoutly to this view. Why a stable should be 
dark and the living room of a human being light, 
I cannot conceive. Light and air are the great 
purifying agents. Germs of various kinds multi- 
ply mightily in the dark, while many are killed by 
the light. The only reason that is given for a dark 
stable is that constant light in a horse's eyes is 
likely to injure his organs of sight. I grant that 



222 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

cheerfully. Still there is no reason why there 
should not be light without the light shining di- 
rectly into the eyes of the horses. It is as easy as 
possible to place the windows above the heads of 
the horses, and even to shield them with shutters 
that open upwards, shutters such as are so gener- 
ally used on seaside cottages. 

Ventilation is most important. This should al- 
ways be provided for, however, so that in securing 
it there will not also be draughts either on the 
body or the legs of a horse. To accomplish this is 
not diflficult even in the stables of the dry-goods- 
box pattern. The one supreme affection of a 
horse is for his home, and it is as little as an own- 
er can do to make that home comfortable. Clean- 
liness is an imperative necessity. Without it the 
other things go for naught. There is no good rea- 
son why a stable should not be as clean as any 
other part of a gentleman's establishment. And 
yet this is so seldom the case that a man who has 
visited a stable often brings with him to his house 
odors that are unmistakable and entirely objec- 
tionable to the sensitive olfactories of the more 
delicate members of his household. This cleanli- 



THE STABLE AND ITS MANAGEMENT 223 

ness can only be secured by unremitting good 
housekeeping. The stable should not only be 
cleaned very thoroughly once a week, but it 
should be kept clean the other six days in the 
week. Any owner, no matter whether he be a 
good horseman or not, can see to this. He may 
not know the nice points in harnessing a horse or 
even the points of a horse, but his eyes and his 
nose can tell him whether his stable is clean. The 
droppings should be removed as soon as they are 
discovered, and they should not be piled up in the 
stable or against one of the walls of the stable on 
the outside, but removed to a distance, if in the 
country and treated for fertilizers ; in a city stable 
they should be removed daily. This latter can be 
done without any expense to the owner, as there 
are manure collectors only too glad to cart it 
away. 

Drainage is also most important, but it should 
always be surface drainage. Pipes beneath the 
floor are always getting clogged up, and hence be- 
coming foul. Besides plumbing everywhere is 
expensive and bothersome. There should be as 
little as possible of it in a stable. Of course run- 



224 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

ning water is most desirable if not necessary. But 
it should be restricted to two hydrants, one for 
carriage washing and one for drinking water. The 
surface drainage can be got rid of by having the 
floor of the stable a little bit elevated above the 
surrounding ground. Where the stable can be lo- 
cated so that there is declining ground on one side 
other than the exit, there is natural drainage 
which is a great advantage. The stalls also should 
have a very slight incline, so that they will keep 
dry naturally. This stall inclination, however, 
should be very slight, as it is desirable that a 
horse should have all his feet pretty nearly on the 
same level. 

Box-stalls or not? This is a disputed matter. 
Some owners have only box-stalls in their stables; 
some none at all. In my opinion both ideas are 
wrong. Cutting up a stable into a series of boxes 
does not facilitate drainage, ventilation, light, or 
cleanliness. Then again it is doubtful whether a 
horse in a loose box-stall does not often acquire 
habits of independence that are sometimes un- 
comfortable and dangerous. In a stall a horse 
is tied, he is also more easily observed and 



THE STABLE AND ITS MANAGEMENT 225 

therefore always under control. Box-stalls, how- 
ever, are excellent for a horse that comes in very 
tired, or for one that is sick. So I should advise 
that in every stable there be one or two box-stalls, 
but that as a general thing the horses be kept in 
ordinary stalls-. These stalls should be 9 feet long 
and 5 feet wide. A wider stall makes it easier 
for a horse to get cast. The ceiling of a stable 
should not be less than 12 feet.* 

Every stable should be kept cool in summer 
and warm in winter. But artificial heat should 
never be used, as it is in some of the sumptuous 
stables of the over- rich in the large cities. A horse 
does his work in the open, and there is no sense in 
pampering him. In very cold weather the stable 
should be kept as warm as is possible without 
stoves or steam-pipes, and the horse made com- 
fortable with good blankets and plenty of straw 
for his bedding. In the summer when the 

* A carpenter in my neighborhood once asked me to select a horse for 
him from a drove that was on sale in the village. I picked out a large fine 
fellow, and the carpenter bought him. The next day I saw him with an- 
other horse. "Why, where is the roan ?" I asked. "Oh, I had to take him 
back, he was too big for the stable!" "Why the dickens did you not make 
the stable bigger ? " was my comment to the carpenter. 



226 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

thermometers are trying to climb to a hundred 
in the shade, then the shutters should be regu- 
lated so as to keep out the direct rays on the 
sunny side, and other windows and doors be left 
open. 

Harness room and coach room depend al- 
most entirely on the size of the establishment that 
is kept. Both, however, should be light — then 
both can be seen without diflficulty by the owner 
when he makes inspections. These inspections, by 
the way, should not be made at stated times, but 
at any time. An owner who expects his horses to 
be kept in good condition and turned out with 
proper harness to proper traps must take an in- 
terest in his stable and be on good terms with his 
servants. There is no suggestion of familiarity in 
this, but only the good understanding and the 
good feeling that always exists between that mas- 
ter and man, when the one gives and other gets 
good service. 

A well-groomed horse is so fine a thing that we 
have latterly applied the term to fine men and 
beautiful women. The grooming of a horse is an 
art, which is not practised on more than one or 



THE STABLE AND ITS MANAGEMENT 227 

two per cent of the horses at work in the United 
States. The others are cleaned in a happy-go- 
lucky fashion, which makes them neither clean nor 
beautiful. This is not as it should be; a horse that 
is compelled to give service to a man is entitled to 
good attention. An ungroomed or improperly 
groomed horse has an offensive odor. This does 
not conduce to the pleasure of a person using such 
a horse nor to the well being of the horse himself. 
In grooming a horse the brush and cloth alone 
are needed. A currycomb — once universally 
used — should never be put on a horse. It serves 
a good purpose, however, in cleaning the brush. 
And that is its only service. Where an owner 
knows or suspects that the currycomb is used 
directly on the horse it is better to banish it en- 
tirely. When a horse has been put away covered 
with sweat and the sweat allowed to dry, it is very 
much easier to remove this salty deposit with a 
currycomb than with a brush. But a horse should 
never be put away without being thoroughly 
groomed except when he comes in so tired that 
the grooming would further fatigue him. This is 
sometimes the case. When it is so the horse 



228 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

should have quite loosely-wrapped bandages put 
on his legs, he should be well blanketed, given a 
swallow of water and turned into a box-stall 
knee deep in straw. Then when this horse is rest- 
ed enough to be groomed, the mud on his legs 
will have become caked and will come off by 
using the hand and a wisp of straw, the polishing 
being finished with the brush and cloth. The 
dried sweat should be removed in the same way. 
When a muddy horse comes into the stable it is 
a great temptation to play the hose on his legs, 
and so wash the mud off. This should never be 
done. The only places where water should be ap- 
plied to a horse are the feet and the other hairless 
portions. These should be washed with a sponge. 
The washing of a horse's feet before he is put 
away is most important. "No foot, no horse'* is 
the old English rule. And it is as true as gospel. 
The feet should always be kept clean in the sta- 
ble, and at night they should be packed with 
sponge or felt. The foot of a horse is an impor- 
tant part of him, and every owner should see that 
they are well looked after. And in accomplishing 
this he will not find it an easy job, for a horse has 



THE STABLE AND ITS MANAGEMENT 220 

to have his shoes changed every three or four 
weeks, and if the feet be not ruined by the farrier 
or the fads of his groom or coachman then he is 
lucky. Every man that has anything to do with 
horses sooner or later develops notions as to 
horseshoeing, the blacksmith usually knowing 
much less than any one else but confident that he 
knows it all. He should know it all, as to shoe 
horses is his business. As a matter of fact, how- 
ever, his practice, if he be permitted to have his 
own sweet will, is to lame horses and ruin their 
feet. There are a few good horseshoers, however, 
and if an owner find one in his neighborhood he 
is lucky. I shall not attempt, however, to write a 
treatise on horseshoeing. There are books in 
abundance on the subject, and any man who 
wishes to become an accomplished amateur on 
the subject can find plenty to study and also an 
abundance of instruction. But there are a few 
principles that dominate all else. The shoe should 
be neither too large nor too small. A large shoe 
stretches the hoof too much, a small shoe pinches 
the hoof and makes corns. Then do not permit 
the blacksmith to pare the sole and frog of the 



230 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

foot or rasp or burn the hoof to make it fit the 
shoe he has selected. The shoe should be made to 
fit the hoof, and as few nails used as is consistent 
with security. As the hoof is growing all the time, 
just as a man's finger-nails grow, the shoes need 
often to be changed so that they will not be too 
small and so contract the hoof. The ideal horse is 
the barefoot horse, but this is not possible when 
a horse is used on pavements or hard roads. Then 
the shoe should not be too heavy. Heavy shoes 
merely make a horse's work very much harder. 

The feeding and watering of a horse are most 
important. The horse can carry only a little food, 
as his stomach is small compared with his size 
and his need of nourishment. But he can drink a 
good deal of water. He should have both food and 
water equal to his needs. He should always be fed 
three times a day, and he would not be the worse 
if he were treated as the Germans treat them- 
selves, with four meals a day. Moreover, a horse's 
food should be varied a little. Oats and hay three 
times a day for three hundred and sixty-five days 
in the year may suflBce, but it seems to me very 
like a cruelty when it is so easy to vary the food 



THE STABLE AND ITS MANAGEMENT 231 

with barley, beans, pease, corn, turnips, and 
many other things easy to obtain and not at all 
expensive. A little nibble of fresh grass occasion- 
ally is also a grateful change, but not much of this 
should be given when a horse is doing steady 
work. The allowance of oats in the United States 
army is ten quarts a day. This with plenty of hay 
is a good allowance and will keep a horse in good 
condition, but a hearty eater can make way with 
twelve quarts a day and be all the better for it. 
The hay should not be fed from a rack over the 
manger, but from the ground. When carrots are 
fed they should be sliced ; whole they might choke 
a horse. When corn is fed it should be given on 
the cob. In this way the horse improves his teeth 
and helps his gums, while he is obliged to feed 
slowly. 

A horse should be watered before eating, and 
the last thing at night before the stable is closed. 
And when the horse comes in tired he should be 
given a mouthful of water, even before he is per- 
mitted to drink his fill. I have seen stables where 
there was running water in a trough in each stall. 
I do not recommend this, nor yet a common 



232 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

drinking-place for all the horses in a stable. A 
bucket filled from a hydrant and held up to the 
horse is the best way. A horse needs salt. The best 
way to give it to him is to put a crystal of rock salt 
in his trough and let it remain there. He will then 
take it when he pleases, and not too much at a 
time. 

One man cannot properly look after an unlim- 
ited number of horses. If the stableman does no 
driving he can look after four together with the 
vehicles and harness. If he has to go out with the 
carriages he cannot manage more than three. 
Without a proper, sober, and sensible stableman, 
a gentleman can never have any satisfaction out 
of his horses. They are hard to get, but there are 
such. If a man be an accomplished horseman he 
can train his own servants, and be pretty sure of 
nearly always being well served. If he know noth- 
ing himself he will have to use his own intelli- 
gence and learn. In case he will not do this he had 
better not keep horses. Saddles should be dried in 
the sun when it is possible. Stirrups and bits 
should be cleaned at once as it is much easier to 
prevent rust than remove it. The same rule 



THE STABLE AND ITS MANAGEMENT 233 

should apply to all harness and to carriages. The 
best results will never be obtained unless the 
grooms be given ample time to harness or saddle 
a horse. Sometimes, of course, in cases of emerg- 
ency this has to be done " on the jump," but gen- 
erally speaking the groom should be given time to 
do his work with calm carefulness. 



CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

RIDING AND DRIVING 

All of us have heard of natural riders. It must be 
that when any one with knowledge of the art of 
riding speaks in this way that he means to say 
that the individuals alluded to had a great nat- 
ural capacity to acquire the art of riding, for rid- 
ing is an art and does not come to any one except 
through practice, instruction, and imitation. 
Some persons can acquire a foreign tongue with 
what seems an easy facility — while others of 
equal mentality — have the greatest difficulty 
and never succeed in any eminent degree. Those 
to whom the acquirement of foreign tongues is 
easy have a gift for languages, just as some others 
have a gift for mathematics or for rhyming or for 
drawing. And so it is in Equitation. To some 
riding comes easily, to others it is difficult, while 
some others seem absolutely incapable of acquir- 

234 



RIDING AND DRIVING 235 

ing a good seat, good hands, and that knowledge 
of horse nature which complete the equipment of 
every expert in the art. I confess that I do not 
know much about riding schools, nor indeed that 
I have seen much of them. When I was a boy in 
Kentucky there were no riding schools there, and 
I am not at all sure that there have ever been. 
And yet so competent a judge and careful an ob- 
server as Mr. Edward L. Anderson has ex- 
pressed the opinion that the Kentuckians are the 
best riders in America. 

If this be so, and I agree with him, it must be 
that the Kentuckians in educating their horses 
also educated themselves. This seems reasonable 
enough, for the Kentucky saddle-horse is the best 
trained of any saddle animals in America, though 
the circus tricks of what are called the "high- 
school horse" are unknown. It used to be com- 
mon there at the county fairs to have rings for 
men, and for boys under fifteen, in which they 
competed with one another as to skill in horse- 
manship. The competitors put their horses 
through all the paces and were required by the 
judges to change horses, so as to see what each 



236 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

rider could do on a strange horse. These rings 
were most interesting, and the largest crowds of 
visitors were usually attracted by these features. I 
never saw any *' circus tricks" but once. Then a 
German, who had served in the Civil War, en- 
tered in the contest making his horse do the com- 
mon high-school feats, including that of going to 
his knees and lying down. This German carried 
off the blue ribbon to the amazement of many, in- 
cluding myself. The fact proved, however, that 
the Kentuckians, who happened to be judges that 
day, were not inhospitable to foreign ideas, and 
recognized that the best rider was the one who 
had the greatest control over his horse and could 
get the most out of him. Now I believe that they 
were right, though at the time I protested against 
such a judgment with all my might. Since then in 
the army riding schools many of these arts are 
properly included in the course of instruction. No 
good knowledge is amiss in a horse, and the best 
rider is he who can make his horse do the most 
kinds of things, even though some of them seem 
rather absurd and useless. It goes rather against 
the grain for me to say this for I, like most gentle- 



RIDING AND DRIVING 237 

men riders in America, was brought up with the 
English notion that to ride straight and fast and 
be in at the finish was both the beginning and the 
end of horsemanship, while I looked upon any- 
thing else as not only superfluous but rather un- 
manly. In this country at that time, and to a very 
great extent now, we looked upon all the Conti- 
nental people of Europe as most unsportsmanlike 
and mere dandy frivolers in horsemanship. This 
is the case in England to-day, universally the 
case. There the hunting field and the polo 
grounds are the only places where horsemanship 
is put to the test. In those fields the riding of Eng- 
lishmen and Irishmen is superb. No other people 
can compete with them. That is natural enough, 
however, as they do more in the way of hunting 
and polo than any others and pay more atten- 
tion to the breeding of horses suitable to these 
kinds of work. But the prejudice against the Con- 
tinentals in horsemanship is as insular as many 
other opinions that are cherished there. It is also 
entirely undeserved. Among the French, the Ger- 
mans, the Austrians and Italians are splendid 
riders, men who can go anywhere an Englishman 



238 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

can, and also perform feats an Englishman never 
dreamed of. 

I recall very well when Buffalo Bill first took 
his *' Broncho Busters" to England that the press 
and the people, particularly the horsemen, insist- 
ed that these vicious wild horses, that had been 
spoiled in the breaking, were merely trick horses, 
trained to their antics and taught to buck and 
plunge and turn somersaults. At length came the 
request that some English riders be permitted to 
try the bronchos. The request was hospitably en- 
tertained, and one afternoon several men ap- 
peared. They insisted, however, that they be per- 
mitted to use English saddles and bridles. This 
request was acceded to and the experiments were 
tried. I never saw a more pitiful exhibition of 
helplessness. They tumbled off as though they 
were inexperienced babies, and some were more 
or less hurt. Indeed the experiments resulted in so 
many accidents that they were given up as too 
dangerous. The English saddle and the English 
seat are well adapted to the hunting field, but not 
at all suitable for the kind of riding cow-punchers 
have to do and the kind of horses that they have 



RIDING AND DRIVING 239 

to use. This is proved by the fact that when an 
Englishman goes into ranch Hfe in this country, 
and many of them have done it, they soon adopt 
the Mexican saddle and the cowboy seat. The 
many exhibitions given by Cody in Europe have 
made the people over there believe that the 
Rough Rider is the typical American horseman. 
It is unquestionably an American style that is 
well adapted to the work and the purpose which 
created it. And yet there are no schools at which 
a man can learn rough riding except the ranches. 
There I am sure there is no systematic instruc- 
tion; but the beginner observes and imitates the 
experts, and by practice acquires the art which 
enables him to "bust" a broncho. Some learn 
quickly, some slowly, and some never at all. 

This is as it is in other kinds of riding whether 
in the park, over the hurdles or in the hunting 
field. Instruction, imitation, and practice are 
what make a rider — the man who rides the 
most being apt to be the best. Even, however, 
when a man rides a great deal, unless he use intel- 
ligence he will never become either expert or 
graceful. I have known men who rode for many 



240 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

years without acquiring either grace or skill in 
the saddle. This was either from inaptitude or 
from a careless disregard of the principles of the 
art. I have known other men who had strong 
seats, which enabled them to acquit themselves 
well in the hunting field, but who never were 
graceful or seemed entirely at ease. They simply 
lacked the grace that usually is part and parcel of 
good horsemanship. It is generally supposed 
that at West Point Military Academy there is 
maintained the best riding school in the country. 
This is probably true. But I have seen compara- 
tively few American army oflScers who looked 
*' smart" in the saddle. Their idea is, no doubt, to 
be businesslike rather than finished. In this I be- 
lieve they are quite wrong for " slouchiness " is out 
of harmony with the military seat just as it is in the 
park or the show ring. It finds its only appropriate 
place among the rough riders of the plain. 

" I saw young Harry, with his beaver on, 
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm'd, — 
Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury, 
And vaulted with such ease into his seat. 
As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds, 



RIDING AND DRIVING 241 

To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus; 

And witch the world with noble horsemanship." 

The Indian should probably be considered the 
real American type * of rider. There were no 
horses here when the whites came, but the In- 
dians rather quickly caught and subjugated some 
of the wild horses that were descended from the 
castaways of the Spanish explorers. They un- 
doubtedly taught themselves to ride in the first 
place, though many of them had seen mounted 
white men. It is impossible to think that in the 
many generations that they have been using 
horses, that they have not improved in their 
horsemanship. At any rate they have a style of 
their own, and as bareback riders they cut a great 
dash. But they are not good horsemen. They are 
cruel to their horses, and are far from getting the 
best results out of their mounts. The whites, as 



* I hope it will never occur to a visitor to this country to think that 
what is called the mounted traflSc squad of the New York poUce represent 
any American type of riders. With them it is go-as-you-please and kind 
Heaven help us from falling oflF. Only a few moments before making this 
note I saw a group of these police going through the Fourth avenue. Some 
were ambling, some singlefooting, some in a hand gallop and some trot- 
ting. One noble horse, fit for a general's charger, was going two or three 
gaits at once and the rider keeping his seat with the help of the reins. 



242 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

was proved year after year in the frontier war- 
fare, can outride them even when the whites 
carry more weight and more impedimenta. 

The best horseman usually gets his instruction 
and acquires most of his skill in his early youth. 
But there is no use in putting a boy on a horse un- 
til he has intelligence enough to learn what he is 
told to do and strength sufficient to keep his seat 
and manage his horse. The pony for very young 
children is merely a plaything. No child ever 
learned much from a pony or by means of a pony. 
The horse is what a man rides, and it is upon a 
horse that a child should be taught. A large horse 
would not be suitable for a boy of ten or eleven, 
the earliest age that a boy can learn much that is 
valuable of the art. But the small horse, some- 
thing like a polo pony for instance, may be and 
should be very much of a horse — all horse, in- 
deed. Where there is a good riding school — that is 
the place to send a lad for his first instruction. 
There are some grooms, however, who make ex- 
cellent instructors, even though as a general thing 
grooms look like the dickens in the saddle. They 
know horses, however, and know how to ride 



RIDING AND DRIVING 243 

them, even though they do not acquire the finish 
and excellence that is to be expected of gentle- 
men. But as critics of the riding of others they are 
often unexcelled. Have some kind of a master, 
unless he be an ignoramus, for a lad in the begin- 
ning, and by no means let him go at the game by 
the light of nature. Uninstructed he is sure to ac- 
quire habits that it will be harder for him to over- 
come than it would have been for him to be cor- 
rect from the beginning. And he should be given 
a reason for everything he is told to do. That it is 
necessary to be reasonable in riding makes me 
sometimes think that it would be just as well not 
to put a boy on a horse until he was fifteen or six- 
teen. The objection to this delay is that a lad will 
be kept out of four or five years of fun in the very 
playtime of his life. 

A beginner should use only a snafl3e-bit with 
one rein. The awkwardness of a beginner and his 
disposition to help keep his seat with the aid of 
the reins is frequently a severe hardship on a 
horse and pretty sure to ruin a horse's mouth. 
Besides both snafl3e and curb are in the begin- 
ning confusing, and too much of a handful for a 



244 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

tyro in a novel position. Of course a correct seat 
in the saddle is impossible at first, but an effort at 
it should be made from the start. When the be- 
ginner is placed in the saddle he should sit up 
straight and let his legs hang down straight. Then 
the stirrups should be adjusted so that when the 
ball of the foot is upon the iron, the leg still being 
straight, the heel will be about three inches below 
the stirrup. Then the rider should be required to 
so bend his knees that his toe and heel will be on 
a level without moving back into the saddle so 
that his buttocks will be against the cantle. This 
bending of the knees will bring them in a position 
so that they can clutch the horse and secure his 
seat. Great emphasis should be laid upon the 
fact that the toes should not be turned out. The 
feet should be parallel with the horse. When they 
are so the knees come in contact with the saddle 
and the seat is secured. When a rider turns out his 
toes he must depend upon the calf of the leg to 
form his clutch. This not only is awkward, but it 
prevents the thighs from doing their part of the 
work. 

Being thus mounted the beginner should only 



RIDING AND DRIVING 245 

walk his horse at first. Indeed I should not rec- 
ommend anything faster than a walk in the first 
lesson. The object of that first lesson is to familiar- 
ize a novice to a novel position, and enable him 
to know something of the sensation of being 
astride a horse. If he go faster at first he is sure to 
bump around and tug on the reins, the latter be- 
ing about the greatest sin against horsemanship. 
After this he can go in a very slow trot, and still 
later in a hand gallop. Having acquired the ca- 
pacity to keep his seat in these gaits with his feet 
parallel to the horse and his knees well in and 
without tugging on the reins to keep his balance, 
he has reached the point when he may be in- 
structed to ride with both reins, snaffle, and curb. 
There are some riders who never use other than 
the snaffle, indeed it was quite a fad in the neigh- 
borhood of New York a few years ago. But I do 
not believe that the very best results can be ob- 
tained without the curb. The curb enables a rider 
to keep his horse better in hand, and a horse not 
in hand under the saddle is apt to do several dis- 
agreeable things — sprawl or be slouchy in his 
gaits, for instance, or worse than all tumble down. 



246 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

To hold the snaffle and curb reins in the left 
hand properly so that either one or both may be 
used at pleasure is most important. The reins of 
the curb bit should be divided by the little finger, 
the reins of the snaffle by the long finger, the loose 
ends of both pairs being carried through the 
hand and held by the thumb against the forefin- 
ger. The right hand should be kept on the loose 
ends of the reins behind the left, and when reins 
are needed to be shortened the right hand should 
pull them or either of them through the bridle 
hand; but when the right hand is needed in as- 
sistance of the bridle hand, the right should be 
placed in front of the left. The knuckles of the 
bridle rein should be kept up. This all seems sim- 
ple enough, and it is so simple when learned that 
an experienced rider never gives it a thought : but 
new riders some times find it hard to learn, in- 
deed some never learn it. 

The beginner should not use a spur. Most peo- 
ple think a spur is an instrument of punishment. 
It should seldom be so used. It is merely a tool to 
assist the rider in conveying his wishes to the 
horse. But to an obstinate, pig-headed horse it is 



RIDING AND DRIVING 247 

a reminder that the rider has something in re- 
serve. The horse, by the way, is not the intellec- 
tual animal that some think, and ** horse sense'* 
ought not to be much of a compliment to a man. 
Seven horses out of ten will become bullies, and 
get the upper hand if they be suffered so to do. 
There is one sense, however, that even a bullying 
horse always preserves — he knows the touch of 
the master hand and stops his '* monkey shines" 
in very short order. But there are other horses — 
crazy horses and fool horses. The crazy horse can 
be subdued by the Rarey or other similar method, 
but for the fool horse there is no hope. He learns 
nothing, remembers nothing — the glue factory 
for him is the only proper place. 

And how late in life can a man take up horse- 
back riding ? That is hard to say. There are men 
and men — some at forty are to all intents and 
purposes sixty, while others at sixty appear not 
over forty. So long as a man retains a reasonable 
amount of suppleness and agility he is not too old 
to take up horseback riding and get great plea- 
sure and benefit out of it, while if he began as a 
youth and has kept it up there is no reason why 



248 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

he should give it up so long as he can sit a horse 
and the exercise is not too exhausting. Remember 
what Lord Palmerston said: *'The best thing for 
the inside of a man is the outside of a horse." And 
it is so ; there is no exercise that so aids digestion, 
none which more completely takes the cobwebs 
out of the brain. A man who takes up horseback 
riding in middle life need not expect to become as 
accomplished say as his son who began at twelve ; 
but if he will give his mind to it he will be apt to 
do very well and will surely get from it both 
pleasure and profit. I know a lady who did not 
take up horseback riding until she was a mother. 
I have seen her in the hunting field since she be- 
came a grandmother sailing along as gaily as a 
bird, and even taking a tumble with the serene 
amiability of a youth in small clothes. But she 
has found the fabled spring. 

That every rider will sooner or later have a fall 
is inevitable. Therefore when the first one comes 
there should be no discouragement, even to a 
man of middle age. Many falls are prevented 
when a horse stumbles by gathering the horse, 
and assisting him to regain his footing. But often, 



RIDING AND DRIVING 249 

in jumping particularly, the fall cannot be pre- 
vented. When the rider feels it coining the best 
way is to take the feet from the stirrups, tuck in 
the chin, and fall as much like a ball as possible, 
holding the reins, however, until the feet are 
surely clear of the stirrups. I was recently 
knocked off my horse on a steep hillside path by 
coming in contact with the limb of a tree. I rolled 
down the hillside for fifty feet, but suffered no in- 
convenience though I weigh 175 pounds and 
carry an undue amount of that weight at the 
middle. Had I landed on my head, the conse- 
quences would probably have been serious. 

Every rider should learn how to make a horse 
change his lead in the gallop, that is, change the 
leading foot from right to left and back again. 
Horses naturally go with the right foot in front 
or the left foot in front, as the case may be, just 
as children are more dextrous with the right 
hand or the left. When the change is desired, the 
horse should be well in hand, and when from 
right to left is required the right heel should be 
applied when the leading foot is on the ground, 
and the hind legs are leaving it; immediately 



250 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

thereafter as the right fore foot is rising the left 
rein should make a slight play and the change in 
lead will be effected without a false step or dis- 
turbance in pace. Every rider should practise 
making figure eights, each circle being from 
twenty to thirty feet in diameter, and asking his 
horse to change the lead when going from one 
circle to the other. In some show rings the judges 
require that the riders do this, and those who ac- 
complish it easily and gracefully help their score 
very considerably. 

The American jockeys have developed a new 
method of race riding, a kind of acrobatic horse- 
manship, which when the English first saw it 
they called the " monkey-on-the-stick " style. 
The jockies use very short stirrups and seem to 
throw the weight even forward of the withers so 
as to relieve the hind legs, where the propelling 
power is, from as much weight as possible. It 
seems effective and has been almost universally 
adopted by all save steeplechase riders, who still 
use a stirrup long enough for both knees and legs 
to embrace the horse — or as Mr. Anderson says, 
they still ride like men. 



RIDING AND DRIVING 251 

A good rider is apt to be also a tolerable driver. 
The contrary of this, however, is not in the least 
the case. There are many good drivers who were 
never mounted in their lives. Probably also there 
are many more good drivers in this country than 
good riders. It is with us a more universal method 
of employing the horse. Notwithstanding this, 
good driving is by no means universal. Indeed I 
doubt whether it is common. It seems the easiest 
thing in the world to sit in a wagon and pull on 
the right rein or the left and go wheresoever one 
chooses. Because it seems so easy all kinds and 
conditions of people essay to drive no matter how 
little experience they may have. I have some- 
times been nearly scared out of my wits in driving 
with a man or woman whose every act displayed 
ignorance of even first principles. Probably no 
more grievous insult could be paid to a man than 
to betray lack of confidence in his capacity to 
drive, and latterly when I have been asked to go 
with a man, even to the golf links two miles away, 
when I knew he did not know how to handle the 
reins or manage a horse I have blandly declined. 
Death comes to all of us, but there seems to be 



252 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

lack of wisdom in seeking it in such an ignoble 
fashion. 

The men who train trotting horses in America 
are the most wonderful drivers the world has ever 
seen. They seem to get more speed out of a horse 
at less expense than any others. I have often 
thought that the lowering of trotting records in 
America had been assisted in a great degree by 
the increasing skill of American drivers. How 
many seconds this skill may be responsible for I 
have no idea — maybe one second, maybe five or 
ten. But their patience in developing the horse 
and their skill in driving is responsible for a good 
deal. I have often watched the trotters on the 
Speedway in New York, and many a time I have 
seen contests which I was sure would have been 
reversed had the drivers been changed. No doubt 
some men have an aptness for driving, just as 
others have an aptness for riding; but driving is 
also an art which can be acquired only by in- 
struction, imitation, and practice together with a 
knowledge of and consideration for horses. There 
are so many things that a man must know to 
make him a good driver that it would take a book 



RIDING AND DRIVING 253 

by itself in which to set down the rules. I shall 
not make such an essay, but content myself with 
a few fundamental principles. 

The first that I shall mention may seem trifling 
but is really of much importance. It matters not 
so much what kind of coat a driver may wear, but 
he must have a hat that fits so well that it will not 
be blown off even in a gale. Many awkward hap- 
penings have resulted from a driver's efforts to 
secure his hat at a moment when all his attention 
was needed by his horse or horses. He should also 
have proper gloves. They should be loose enough 
to enable him free use of his fingers, and indeed 
of all of his hands, but not so loose that they will 
slip off while he is driving. A size larger than his 
dress gloves would, I should say, be about the 
right thing. They should also be heavy enough to 
prevent the reins from hurting his hands. Dog- 
skin is probably the best material. 

Then he should, even in a runabout, be, at 
least, above his horse. This is regulated by a 
driver's cushion with a slant, the back being 
about three inches above the front. His feet 
should not be sprawled out against the dash- 



254 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

board, nor yet tucked awkwardly underneath 
him. Indeed with a driver's cushion either atti- 
tude would be uncomfortable if not impossible. 
What he should seek for is a position in which he 
is at ease in all his movements for a driver has to 
drive all the time, at every moment from the 
starting out until he sets foot on the ground and 
turns over his horse to the groom. It is careless- 
ness in driving that causes nearly all the acci- 
dents, for it is the unexpected that is always hap- 
pening. 

One should always drive with the left hand, 
using the right to hold the whip and give assist- 
ance to the left when it is required to shorten the 
rein. A good mouth is just as excellent in a driv- 
ing horse as in a saddle-horse. The mouth should 
be like velvet, and at all times responsive to the 
telegraphic signal from the hands of the driver. 
To drive with a slack rein makes a horse slouchy 
even when a check is used. To pull on a horse 
hardens his mouth and lessens the control of the 
driver. Nothing is more unpleasant than a pulling 
horse. It is as fatiguing in harness as in the sad- 
dle. And a puller is the easiest thing to accom- 



RIDING AND DRIVING 255 

plish. When it has been accompHshed the driver 
does as much work as the horse. To smack a 
horse with the reins instead of using the whip 
may be well enough for old Dobbin on the farm, 
but it is a silly habit which hurts the horse, with- 
out being effective for the purpose intended, 
while it proves the driver to have no knowledge 
of the business. Jerking on the reins, or rather 
giving a pull and then letting them loose to make 
a horse quicken his gait is unworthy even of a 
peddler or a city huckster. 

Keep your eye on your horse. That is the most 
important thing in driving. The driver is in com- 
mand, and it is the horse's part to obey. This may 
seem an unnecessary thing when jogging along 
on a long clear road. But we should not jog along. 
A brisk pace is the proper pace to drive at, and if 
the road be very long a rest can be taken and no 
time be lost, while if the journey be only seven or 
eight miles the brisk pace reduces the time, and 
the horse ig sooner in the stable and at rest. Pok- 
ing along at a jog will in time ruin any horse. It 
will spoil his style, detract from his speed, and 
take a,way his spirit. When a horse is taken along 



256 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

briskly, it is absolutely necessary to keep him al- 
ways well in hand — not a pulling on the bit, but 
a feeling of the bit so that the horse will know 
every instant of the time that he is being driven 
by one who is master. 

A driver should keep in communion with his 
horse. A horse has a keen sense of hearing and a 
good memory for a voice. The master should 
have his horse well acquainted with his voice. 
But he should not do too much talking or chir- 
ruping when other horses are about. That is a 
discourtesy to other drivers whose horses may be 
fretted and made restless when it is meant that 
they should stand still. The disregard of this is 
not only annoying but has been the cause of many 
accidents at crowded railway stations, where 
many traps are waiting for the home-comers. 

As to the method of holding the reins Mr. Price 
Collier, a most accomplished horseman and 
charming writer on driving says: "The reins 
should be held with the near rein between the 
thumb and first finger, the off -rein between the 
third and fourth fingers. Hold your hand so that 
your knuckles, turned towards your horse, and 



RIDING AND DRIVING 257 

the buttons on your waistcoat, will make two par- 
allel lines up and down with the hand three or 
four inches from the body. The reins should be 
clasped, or held by the two lower, or fourth and 
fifth fingers; the second finger should point 
straight across and upward enough to keep the 
near rein over the knuckle of that finger and the 
thumb pointing in the same direction, but not so 
much upward. The reins are held not by squeez- 
ing them on their flat surfaces, but by pressure on 
their edges. The edges, in a word, being held be- 
tween the two last fingers and the root of the 
thumb. This arrangement makes a flexible joint 
of the wrist, for the reins and for the bit to play 
upon. This suppleness of wrist, just enough and 
not too much, is what is called ' hands.* It means 
that your wrist gives just enough play to the 
horse's mouth to enable him to feel your influ- 
ence, without being either confused or hampered 
by it. As this is the key to perfection in all driv- 
ing, everybody claims to possess it; only the elect 
few have it.** 

In leaving the stable or starting out from any 
other place, you should go quietly. Nothing is 



258 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

more vulgar than to rush off with the idea of 
" cutting a dash." It does not give the horse a fair 
show, and driver and horse are not yet in good 
adjustment. And in stopping also it is vulgar to 
rush to the stopping place and throw the horse on 
his haunches by a quick pull. Neither of these 
things is done by good drivers, but is the practice 
of either the ignorant or vulgar who wish to at- 
tract attention to themselves at places where 
there are likely to be spectators. 

I have often heard it said that two horses were 
easier to drive than one. 1 always marked down 
the person who made such a remark as not being 
thoroughly in earnest, or not knowing the subject 
he was discussing. I do not know how much hard- 
er it is to drive two horses than one. That is I can- 
not express the difference mathematically. But 
there is a good deal Any reasonably strong man 
can prevent one horse from getting away with 
him. Few can prevent a thoroughly frightened 
team if they once get off. The thing is not to let 
them get off. Not to permit this requires that he 
shall control two animals, for when one of a pair 
gets frightened he quickly communicates his 



RIDING AND DRIVING 259 

fear to his mate. When the panic is serious then 
serious trouble is Hkely to ensue. With a runaway 
horse or a runaway pair the circumstances of the 
moment must control. If the road is clear and the 
driver can keep the horse straight all may go 
well; but horses nearly always choose to get 
frightened when the conditions are nearly the 
opposite of this. Then the circumstances of the 
moment must guide the driver. If he keeps his 
head cool and can prevent collisions, he will prob- 
ably come out safely. But the best of them have 
been run away with. This comes sooner or later 
to every man who uses horses constantly. Eternal 
vigilance will prevent most all of the accidents 
that might happen; but human nature is fallible 
and horses are very uncertain. Carelessness in the 
driver, however, is responsible for ninety and 
nine of every hundred driving accidents that 
happen. The flying automobile, in recent years, 
has been responsible for a great many. I must say, 
however, that I never met but once with anything 
but the greatest consideration from automobilists 
that I have encountered when driving. The 
discourteous one proved to be a dentist, and 



260 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

the mission of dentists in the world is, I believe, 
to give people pain. 

Every driver should know when his horses are 
properly harnessed and hitched to the vehicle. 
And he should never fail to look over the whole 
"turn out" in every detail to see that all is secure 
and each part in proper adjustment to every 
other part. The horse show authorities have for- 
mulated rules as to what is proper for one vehicle 
and another. The experts are veritable martinets 
and attach as much importance to a strap here and 
a buckle there as the unlucky King of Prussia, 
who did battle with Napoleon, attached to one 
row or two rows of buttons on a soldier's coat. 
Intelligence, however, can find its way without 
much regard to these fine points. But it is never 
safe to trust to grooms and stablemen even 
though they may really know more about it than 
the driver himself. The driver is the master, and 
he should make the inspection even though it be 
only a formal one — he should assume a virtue 
though he has it not. Inspections of the work of 
stablemen do not go amiss unless the unlucky 
master should take to finding mares* nests. Two 



RIDING AND DRIVING 261 

or three such discoveries will hurt discipline 
amazingly. 

There is now a good deal of four-in-hand driv- 
ing in America. It is only now pleasure driving, 
and quite different from that of the coaching 
days of our grandfathers' time. This is an art 
which a man may be able to pick up himself. But 
the safest and quickest course is to take instruc- 
tion from a professional or from a friend, if so 
amiable a friend can be found. It is, of course, 
more diflScult to drive four than two horses. But 
this can be learned by any cool-headed man who 
has the good fortune to be a horseman to start 
out with. Not having that gift he would do well to 
let it alone. Some of the most accomplished four- 
in-hand drivers about New York are women, 
which shows that it is not main strength that is 
effective, but skill and practice. Practice and in- 
telligence combined will overcome most all of the 
difficulties. By practice I do not mean an hour a 
day for a couple of weeks, but six hours a day for 
two or three years; and by intelligence I mean 
the instructed knowledge which enables a driver 
to know the reason for each thing that is done. 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 

TRAINING VS. BREAKING 

As has been frequently remarked before in this 
volume, the horse is not a very intelligent animal. 
Nor has he any of that natural affection and 
fidelity that is so remarkable in the dog. This be- 
ing the case — and it is so no matter what the 
sentimentalists who know nothing about the sub- 
ject may say — the training of a young horse is a 
thing requiring much patient intelligence on the 
part of the person who undertakes the job. But 
this patience is rewarded if the young horse have 
qualities that are worthy of development. I fancy 
that seven horses out of ten in the United States 
are broken before their training begins. This 
means, in my opinion, that a large percentage of 
a horse's value is deliberately thrown away in 
the very beginning of his career of usefulness. 
A horse broken is a horse half spoiled. The 

262 



TRAINING VS. BREAKING 263 

*' Broncho Buster" is the typical horse breaker. 
Those who have not been on the frontier have 
seen the Broncho Buster's methods in the Wild 
West circuses. A young horse or a wild horse is 
saddled and bridled. A Rough Rider mounts 
and stays on the back of the young thing until the 
animal is conquered and subdued through fear 
and fatigue. This brutal method of treating 
young horses used to be universal in America. 
That so much of it should still be done is not 
complimentary to the intelligence and kindli- 
ness of American horse owners. It is about on 
a par with the treatment that weak-minded 
persons received a century or so ago. They 
were beaten and maltreated and kept in order 
by cruelty and harshness — ruled, indeed, by 
the fear of those who should have treated 
them with the most patient kindness. When 
the spirit is taken out of a horse by his early 
handling, we can never hope to develop his small 
intelligence very far, or to guide his instincts in 
the right direction. While a horse's intelligence 
is of a low order, he has a fine memory. His 
fear being aroused in the beginning, he remains 



264 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

afraid, and is controlled by his fear alone — his 
fear of being hurt. This always seemed to me a 
cowardly way of acting, for the horse is one of the 
most timid of all animals. To beat a horse is 
about as noble as to beat a child. 

The breeders of good horses are pretty gen- 
erally giving up the rough methods of breaking. 
Their horses are too valuable to be trifled with in 
this way. There are some horses that are natu- 
rally vicious. With them the gentle method will 
not accomplish the desired result. They have to be 
conquered in another way. When this is the case, 
I much prefer the Rarey method. Rarey so fash- 
ioned a harness that he could cast a horse the 
moment that a horse disobeyed. After a horse has 
been thrown a few times he usually comes to the 
conclusion that obedience is the safer plan. There 
is nothing cruel in the Rarey method and with 
bad horses it is much to be preferred to the brutal 
breaking style. The horse is not hurt, he is merely 
surprised at the result of his own waywardness. 

The Arabs handle their horses from the time 
they are foaled, so that they are from the begin- 
ning accustomed to men, women and children 



TRAINING VS. BREAKING 265 

and all the other things common to a human habi- 
tation. That is the way all young horses should 
be treated. To be sure this involves a good deal of 
work and many think that it does not pay, so they 
turn their colts out and let them get two or three 
years old before anything is done with them. This 
is as wise as to let a boy run wild and uninstruct- 
ed until a year or so before he is bidden to go 
forth and earn his own living. When a colt is ac- 
customed to persons and not afraid of being 
touched or led, only patience and intelligence is 
required to complete his education without any 
fight or contest whatever. 

Before the colt is a year old it should be ac- 
customed to the cavesson while running in a pad- 
dock, and when a year old it should be practised 
on the lunge, a rein of fifteen feet long attached 
to the nose-piece of the cavesson. This is a head- 
collar with a metal nose-band, upon the front and 
each side of which are rings. To the front ring the 
leather lunge is fastened and from the side rings 
straps will be buckled to a surcingle or girth at 
such lengths as will prevent the colt from ex- 
tending the face much beyond the perpendicular. 



266 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

The colt should then be led about, stopping and 
starting, time and time again until it has some 
comprehension of the word of command. The feet 
should be lifted so that the colt realizes that the 
trainer has no intention to do him harm. After 
good terms have been established the colt should 
be practised on the lunge, the trainer standing in 
the center of a circle, and letting the colt walk first 
and then trot slowly around the circumference of 
the circle — first to the right, then to the left. 
These short lessons should be given every day. 
Soon a colt enjoys the exercise, evidently think- 
ing it play. If it be a driving horse that is 
being trained, harness should soon be added so 
that the colt will not be afraid of it, and also a 
light bridle with a snaffle-bit or, better still, a 
leather bit. If it be a saddle-horse that is being 
trained, the lunging and bitting should continue 

until the colt is passed two years old before he is 
saddled or mounted. 

Suppose we take the saddle-horse first. Two- 
year-old colts are often trained by light weight 
riders. At three their serious education is contin- 
ued, and at four they are given their accomplish- 



TRAINING VS. BREAKING 267 

ments. The colt, after being practised on the 
lunge, should be taught somewhat the meaning 
and the purpose of the bit before he is mounted. 
Patience and gentleness to the end that fear may 
be banished will enable a trainer to get a colt into 
such an acquiescent condition that when the rider 
finally gets into the saddle the colt accepts the in- 
novation with nothing exceeding a mild surprise. 
The saddle should be used in the lunge exercise 
several times before a man mounts. Some recom- 
mend that a weight, such as a bag of meal, be tied 
into the saddle towards the end of the lunge ex- 
ercises so that the colt will get used to weight on 
the back. This is not a bad idea. Before the rider 
mounts the first time, the stirrups should be pulled 
down and pressure be put upon them so that the 
colt may feel the weight of the saddle. When the 
foot of the rider is first put into the stirrup he 
should raise himself very gently, the left hand 
being in the mane of the colt. After bearing all his 
weight a few seconds in the stirrup he should re- 
turn to the ground without taking his seat in the 
saddle. This he should repeat several times, the 
number of times depending upon how the colt 



268 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

acts. At any rate, this half -mounting should be 
continued until the colt is no longer disturbed by 
it. Then the rider may take his seat in the saddle. 
This should be done as quietly as possible. He 
should sit in the saddle a few minutes and then 
dismount. The mounting and dismounting should 
continue until the colt is accustomed to it. This 
will not be long if everything be done easily, 
slowly and gently. An awkward man has no busi- 
ness in trying to train a saddle-horse. A flop into 
the saddle would, naturally, frighten a colt and 
defeat the purpose in view. When the colt has be- 
come used to a rider in the saddle the rider should 
close his legs against the sides of the colt, draw a 
slight tension on the reins, and induce the colt to 
go forward in a walk. There should be nothing 
but the walk in the first few lessons. In them, 
however, the colt should be taught the meaning of 
the bit so that he could be guided in whatever 
direction the rider wishes. In nine times out of ten 
a colt that has been treated as I have described will 
be quiet and do what is asked of him without 
any excitement. If the colt does get excited then 
the whole work will have to be done over and 



TRAINING VS. BREAKING 269 

over, with more patience and more gentleness, 
until the colt acquiesces. It is most important 
that all these first steps be taken quite slowly, 
otherwise the colt will get hot and excited, and 
then may come a fight which is the thing most 
to be avoided. I can see a rough rider turning up 
a scornful nose at these admonitions. Very well! 
Be scornful as much as you choose, I am not 
writing about the training of a broncho, but of a 
horse fit for a gentleman to ride. 

After the mounted colt goes quietly in the walk, 
then he should be trotted gently, and if the rider 
is a light weight, cantered, too. But as a two-year- 
old work should be very light — play, indeed. At 
three years old the colt may be confirmed in his 
gaits, but not worked a great deal harder than at 
two. At four years old the colt is ready for the fin- 
ishing touches and the beginning of his life work. 
But he is not nearly up to the hard work of which 
he should be capable between six and sixteen. 

Trainers of colts for driving hitch them up 
when they are yearlings, and drive them a little 
to a low cart built with long shafts and running 
out behind. Before being hitched up, however, he 



270 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

is harnessed and driven around with a pair of 
long reins, being guided by the driver to one way 
and another, and being stopped and started at 
the word of command. When the colt is harnessed 
to the cart a strong kicking strap should be used. 
A few lessons a week driven in such a cart will 
work wonders so that when the colt is two years 
old there will be no diflBculty in driving him in an 
ordinary road cart. In driving a colt the same pre- 
cautions should be used as in training a colt for 
the saddle — it should not be frightened or 
treated roughly. 

It is probably more important to accustom a 
young driving horse than a riding horse to the 
sights and sounds that are likely to be encount- 
ered on the road. Here, too, patience and gentle 
firmness are amply rewarded. Whenever I see a 
driver thrashing a young horse to compel him to 
go by an automobile or a trolley car or some 
other strange and fearsome thing, I have a desire 
to get the whip and apply it to the driver. Such 
treatment of a horse is not only cruel, but it is 
utterly foolish. The horse is frightened at what 
he sees. He is afraid that in some way it will hurt 



TRAINING VS. BREAKING 271 

him. And why should he not be ? These devil 
wagons are frightful enough in appearance to 
scare a less timid animal than a horse. There 
is only one course to pursue. Teach the horse 
that the automobile or other frightful machine 
will not hurt him. Do this, not with the whip, 
not with shouts and execrations, but by leading 
the horse up to the offending machine until he 
realizes that it is not some monster of destruc- 
tion. Patience and sense will prevent almost any 
horse from acquiring bad and dangerous habits 
of shying and bolting. Curing a horse of estab- 
lished habits is quite another and a different 
thing. It is like reforming the dissolute or re- 
generating the depraved. The horse, however, 
is not blameworthy. These bad habits are always 
the result of foolishness on the part of some 
man. The sensible course is not to permit a 
horse to acquire bad habits. This is a thousand 
times easier than curing them. Patient firmness 
and gentle insistence will prevent bad habits in 
all save those that are fools. A fool horse is too 
worthless to bother about. 



CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

CONFORMATION AND ACTION 

In the horse shows an exhibitor, except in the 
Thoroughbred classes, is not required to furnish 
the pedigrees of his horses. The judges, therefore, 
decide entirely on conformation and action. 
These two things are what make or unmake the 
excellence of the individual animal. A well- 
formed horse is apt to have good action. Some- 
times this is not so, just as sometimes a woman 
may have beauty of form and feature and lack 
animation, vivacity, and that infinite variety and 
sympathy which recently we have accustomed 
ourselves to call temperament. Good conforma- 
tion in a horse, however, is the advantage which 
conduces to good action. When action and con- 
formation supplement, adjust, and confirm each 
the other, we have what may be called an approach 
to the ideal horse. I have never seen the ideal horse ; 

272 



CONFORMATION AND ACTION 273 

but pretty close to it. I have owned a few that were 
very satisfactory, but never one that was entirely 
so. Still I have hope. I suspect that when one re- 
alizes his ideal in anything, life loses some of its 
zest. The pursuit, the seeking, the longing for the 
unattained — these are the things that make life 
so interesting, so absorbing. If I had the horse I 
have long had in my mind I should be glad, no 
doubt. But I might be sorry, too. There is one 
saving fact, however. We change our ideals as we 
get more experience and further knowledge. I 
have changed my opinions often about horses, 
since I first became interested in them. While 
writing the last chapter of this book I confess that 
I have changed some of my opinions during the 
two or three months that I have been engaged in 
the composition. I have learned some things that 
I did not know before ; I have parted with some 
prejudices which I ought never to have entertain- 
ed. So it was inevitable that I should modify my 
views. If, therefore, I should ever obtain my ideal 
in horse-flesh I might awaken a few weeks later to 
find that I really wanted something just a little 
different. I seek the ideal, therefore, without fear 



274 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

of achieving it and meanwhile I have lots of fun 
with horses that are not more than half what 
they ought to be. 

The oldest writer on horses was Xenophon. He 
says: "The neck should not be thrown out from 
the chest like a boar*s, but like a cock's, should 
rise straight up to the poll, and be slim at the 
bend, while the head, though bony, should have 
but a small jaw. The neck would then protect the 
rider, and the eye see what lies before the feet. " 

Xenophon is the oldest writer on the subject. 
Mr. Price Collier is the latest and in many re- 
gards the best, because he not only knows how to 
write, but knows what he is writing about. Here 
is what he says about the proportions of a well- 
formed horse : 

"One cannot go to buy a horse with a tape- 
measure, but certain proportions are well enough 
to keep in mind. The length of the head of a well- 
proportioned horse is almost equal to the dis- 
tance; (1) from the top of the withers to the point 
of the shoulder; (2) from the lowest point of the 
back to the abdomen; (3) from the point of the 
stifle to the point of the hock; (4) from the point 



CONFORMATION AND ACTION 275 

of the hock to the lower level of the hoof; (5) 
from the shoulder blades to the point of the 
haunch. Two and a half times the length of the 
head gives: (1) the height of the withers and the 
height of the croup above the ground, 
and (2) very nearly the length from the 
point of the shoulder to the extreme of the 
buttock. " 

The tape-measure test is all very well, but if a 
man does not have an eye for a horse he will 
never be able to select a good one by mathe- 
matics. And an eye for a horse is a singular en- 
dowment. I have known men of proved intellec- 
tuality quite incapable of learning about horses. 
Also I have known men who, in the ordinary af- 
fairs of life were very fools but who knew good 
horses by a kind of instinct. The man with an eye 
for a horse takes the whole animal in at a glance ; 
his minute examination, in nine cases out of ten 
only confirms his instant judgment. When I am 
buying a horse I do not need to hesitate very long. 
I have inspected and bought as many as twenty 
in a day, giving not more than fifteen or twenty 
minutes to each horse. Yet these purchases in the 



276 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

main have been satisfactory. No one of them, 
however, was my ideal. 

In a general way, all horses should have cer- 
tain points. Therefore general rules apply in all 
the types, from the Pony to the Percheron. Every 
horse should have (1) a bony head and small 
ears ; (2) medium-sized eyes, neither protruding 
nor sunken, and without an excess of white in the 
pupil; (3) the forehead should be broad; (4) the 
face should be straight and neither concave nor 
convex; (5) the neck should be small and lean, its 
length regulated by the size of the head and the 
weight of the shoulders, the head being so joined 
to the neck that the neck seems to control the 
head instead of the reverse; (6) the shoulders 
should be oblique or sloping; (7) the back should 
be short; (8) the ribs should be well rounded, 
definitely separated and full of length; (9) the 
legs should be flat and lean, with knees wide 
from side to side and flat in front, the upper bone 
of the leg being long and muscular in proportion 
to the lower or the common bone; (10) the feet 
should be moderately large; (11) the pasterns 
should be long rather than short, but, better still. 



CONFORMATION AND ACTION 277 

neither long nor short; (12) the hair should be 
short and fine. 

I might have added another point, making 
thirteen in all, but for luck I stop at the dozen, 
feeling sure that if any of my readers gets a horse 
with the good points noted he will have a treas- 
ure beyond the lot of most men and maybe far 
beyond his deserts. 

A well-formed horse ought to have good ac- 
tion. This does not always follow. But good con- 
formation without good action is a kind of dis- 
appointing fraud. The best action is that which is 
natural to the horse. We expect this in families 
and in types. But training can modify the action 
of a horse, indeed, change it entirely as when a 
pacer is converted into a trotter. With pacers, 
however, I am not concerned as I presume that 
this book is written for gentlemen. 

There can be no good action which is not 
straight. In the walk, the trot and the gallop a 
horse must move his feet and legs in parallel 
lines. The horse that does that naturally can be, 
taught the other things that may not come to him 
by nature — high stepping, for instance. When 



278 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 

a horse moves always without paddHng or any 
other lateral motion, he is a very fit subject for 
cultivation. He can be taught to go daintily and 
gracefully as our grandmothers walked through 
the minuet de la couer. Throwing the feet far out in 
front or lunging, as it is called, is a very ugly trick 
and can be remedied in the shoeing, I am told. I 
believe this to be true, but I have never tried it. 
A horse with this inclination always seemed to 
me badly bred — Hambletonian, for instance — 
and I have not recently bothered with such. Pad- 
dling also can often be corrected by shoeing. 
General rules cannot be laid down as to these 
things. Each horse has his individuality. He must 
be so studied. When an owner brings general 
knowledge and acute intelligence to this study he 
can determine in a little while what is best to be 
done in each case. In the great majority of cases 
the best plan is to sell the horse that seems un- 
promising, but as no horse is ever entirely satis- 
factory some of them must be retained and edu- 
cated by training, a training dominated by gentle- 
ness, courage, firmness and patience — but most 
of all patience, 

THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX 



AsDini AzEEZ, Sultan of Txir- 

KET, 31 

Abd-El-Kader, 18, 23 
Abd.\llah, 116, 128 
Abraham, 18, 19 
AbdalXiAH, XV, 175 
Abdul Hamid II, 146 
Action and Conformation, 272 
Agricultutjal Department, 111 
Alasker Turk, 25 
Alexander, Robert A., 54, 55 
Alix, 132 

Alexander's Abdallah, 171 
Amazonia, 116 
American Stud Book, 41 
Andrew Jackson, 86, 104, 136 
Ancient Sculptures, 6, 7 
Anderson, Edward L., 6, 235, 

250 
Andalusian (Jack), 198 
Armenia, 6, 20 
Arab and Barb, vi, vii, 14, 15 
Aristides, 70 
Arion, 134 
Asia, 6 
Automobiles and Electric 

Tramways, iv 
Axtell, 134 



Barbary, 13, 14 
Barrs, 183, 184 
Bassett, Harry, 66, 67 
Battell, Col. Joseph, 80, 85, 

107 
Berber Barbs, 13 

BELLFOrrNDER, (IMPORTED), 117 

119 

Belle Mead Farm, 70 

Bend Or, 70 

Benjamin Franklin, 10 

Belmont, August, 55 

Beacon Course (Hoboken), 105 

Betsey Harrison, 152, 153 

Ben Brush, 74 

Black Hawk, 88, 90, 106 

Blue Grass, 148, 221 

Blunt, Wilfrid, 33 

Black Douglas, 112, 139 

Bonheur, Rosa, 179 

Boston Blue, 131 

Boston, 56 

Bonner, Robert, 133 

Bonnie Scotland, 69 

Box-Stalls, 224 

Bogus (Loomis's) Son of Lame 
Bogus by Ellis's Bogus, Son 
OF IMP. Tom Bogus, 107 



281 



282 



INDEX 



Bourbon Belle, 71 
British Horse, 8 
Breeding on FiUiMS, iv 
Broncho Busters, 238, 263 
Bramble, 69 
Brutus Morgan, 85 
Breaking and Training, 262 
Bruce, Mr., 142 
Breeding to a Type, v 
Buffalo Bill, 238 
Bulrush Morgan, 86, 92, 93 
BuLLE Rock, 40 
BUT.L Calf, 131 
Buying a Horse, 210 
Byerly Turk, 25, 40, 80 

Carmon, 170, 174, 175 

Canada, 9 

Cassius M. Clay, 139 

Cavesson, 265 

Calash, 10 

Catalan, Jack, 190, 198 

Carlyle, W. L., 176 

Cabell's Lexington, 166 

Changing the Lead, 249 

Charles Kent Mare, 117, 119, 

121 
Civil War, viii, 208, 236 
Circus Tricks, 236 
Clay-Kismet, 145, 177 
Clay-Arabian, v, 13 
Cleveland Bay, 8, 182 
Clydesdale, v, 178, 182 
Clay, Henry, 190 
Continuity in Breeding, vii 

CORTEZ, 8 

Columbus, 8 

Coney Island Jockey Club, 70 



Colonial Era in New England, 

10 
Collier, Mr. Price, 256, 274 
Commissions to Coachmen and 

Grooms, 218 
Conformation and Action, 272 
Continental Riders, 237 
Conestoga, 120 
Coleman's Eureka, 166 
Crusaders, 24 
Cresceus, 132, 175 
Cutting a Dash, 258 
Cub Mare, 41 

Darley Arabl^n, 16, 25, 27, 36, 

40, 80, 101, 168 
Daniel Lambert, 90 
Davy Crockett, 166 
Daumas, General, 18, 22 
Dexter, 94, 132, 139, 140 
Dealers, 216, 217 
DE Lancey, Col., 41, 80 
Denmark, v, 13, 27, 69, 129, 130, 

152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 

161, 163, 166 
De Lesseps, Count Ferdinand, 

21, 22 
Diomed, 12, 42, 43, 44 
Domino, 72, 73 
Dobbins, 73 
Doble, Budd, 94 
Dorsey, L. L., 92 
Domestication of Horse, 5 
Draco, 93 
Driving, 251 
Duke of Magenta, 70 
Duke of Montrose, 70 
Dutchman, 104, 105, 132, 133 



INDEX 



283 



Eclipse (American), 44, 45, 46, 

47, 48, 49, 50, 100 
Eclipse, £9 
Edwin Fohkest, 132 
Egypt, 6 

Elderly Riders, 247 
Electioneer, 139 
Emperor of Norfolk, 71 
English Riders, 237, 238, 239 
Eocene Horse, 3 
EoLus. 70 
Equitation, 234 
Ethan Allan, 89, 93, 94, 95, 111, 

175 
Evolution of Horse, 4 

Falkland Island Horses, 5 

Falls and Tumbles, 248 

Farm Horses, iv 

Fairfax, John, 189 

Fashion, 56 

Fair Rachel, 41 

Falsetto, 70 

Firenzi, 71 

Feabnaught, 93 

Feeding and Watering, 231, 232 

Fellowcraft, 64 

First Instruction in Riding, 242 

Forest Dentmahk, 164 

Four-in-Hand, 261 

Foxhall, 70 

Flying Childers, 27, 28, 43 

Flora Temple, 94, 106, 110, 111, 

114, 115, 132 
Flemish Horses, 8 
Flanders, 9 

George Wilkes, 140 



George M. Patchen, 111, 112, 

139 
Gordon Horse (Morgan), 85 
Goldsmith Maid, 132 
Godolphin Barb, 16, 25, 29, 36, 

80, 102, 168 
Governmental Breeding 

Farms, vii, 167 
Gifford Morgan, 91 
GoLDDUST, 32, 91, 92 
Glidelia, 69 
Glorious Thunder Cloud 

(Lawson's), 177 
Gray Eagle, 51, 52 
Grand Bashaw, 136 
Grenada, 70 
Grinstead, 70 
Grooming, 226 
Green Mountain Maid, 139 
Grant, General, 32, 141, 209 

Hamiltonian (Bishop's), 122, 

123 
Haggin, James B., 55, 72 
Hamilton Busbey, 116, 118,124 
Hamburg, 71, 73 
Hanover, 71 
H.\RRisoN Chief, 171 
Harry Clay, 139, 140 
Harness Rooms, 226 
Hats and Gloves, 253 
Hackney, v, 185, 186 
Hambletonian, 77, 79, 92, 96, 

112, 113, 114, 115, 118, 120, 123, 

139 
Hedgeford (imp.), 152, 153 
Henry Clay, 86, 112, 133, 136, 

137, 171, 175 



284 



INDEX 



Hindoo, 71 

Highland Denmahk, 164 

HlMYAR, 70 

Highland Maid, 106, 132 
Horseback Riding in North, 

viii 
Horseback Riding in South, ix 
Holding the Reins (Riding), 

246 
Holding the Reins (Driving), 

254, 256 
EoNEST Allen, 90 
Holmes, Dr. O. W., 150 
Huntington, Randolph, 13, 30, 

32, 86, 136, 140, 141, 143, 144, 

145 
Hyracotherium, 3 

Ideal Horses, 272, 273, 274 
Indian Riders, 241 

ISHMAEL, 18 

Italian (Jack), 198 

Japanese Cavalry, ix 
Jefferson, President, 31 
John Dillard, 166 
Jones, Mr. J. L., 191 
Jockeyseat, 250 
Jogging, 255 

Kate, 4 

Keene, James R., 55, 65, 70, 72 

Khaled, 146 

Kentucky, 44, 52, 148, 149, 150, 

151, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 235, 

236 
Kentucky's Early Stallions, 

53, 54 



Kentxtckt Hunter and One- 
Eyed Kentucky Hunter, 107 
Kingfisher, 70 

Lath, 41 

Lady Surrey, 86, 137 

Lady Suffolk (her breeding 

AND performance), 105, 106, 

124, 132, 133 
Leopard, 32, 141, 146 
Le Compte, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 

63 
Lexington, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 

63, 64, 65, 66, 142 
Leede's Arabian, 25 
Linden Tree, 141 
Like Begets Like, vi, 39, 128 
LiNSLEY, D. C, 79, 82, 85 
Longfellow, 67 
lorillard, p., 65 
Lord Clinton, 90 
Lou Dillon, 132 
Lord Brilliant, 170 
Lucretia Borgia, 51 
Luke Blackburn, 69 

Massachusetts, 9 
Mace, Dan, 95 
Mambrino, 101, 116, 118, 119 
Mambrino Chief, 175 
Maghreb, 23 

Madam Temple, 107, 109, 110 
]\LuiY Sheppard, 146 
Markham's Arabian, 25, 28 
Majorca (Jack), 198 
Maltese (Jack), 198 
Mammoth (Jack), 191 
Maud S., 132 



INDEX 



^85 



Messenger, 12, 31, 42, 44, 77, 

100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 

120, 136 
Mexico, 9 

Millbir's Damsel, 44, 100 
Miss Woodford, 71 
Mongrels, vi 
Morgan, v, 13, 27, 31, 69, 75, 76, 

79, 129, 146, 151, 171, 173, 175, 

185 
Moorish Invasion of Spain, 23 
Morris, Lewis G., 116, 119 
Morrill, 93 
Morgan, Justin, 41, 79, 82, 85, 

87, 88, 92 
Morgan Eagle, 91 
Monarchist, 70 
Mounting a Colt, 267 
Montgomery Chief, 164 
Mule Colts (treatment and 

feeding), 204, 205 
Mules (fattening for market), 

206 
Mustangs, 31 
Mliles, Value of, 187 

Nancy Hanks, 132 
Narragansett Pacer, 10 
Neohipparion, 4 
Nejd, 13, 14 
Nejdee, Arabs, 13 

NiMROD, 146 

Norfolk Trotter, 185 
Nostalgia (home- sickness) 217 
No Foot no Horse, 228 
Normans, 8 

Orlof, V, 13, 16, 183, 184. 186 
OsBORN, Professor, 9 



Pat Cleburne, 166 

Paul Pry, 104 

Patchen, Mr. Geo. M., 137 

Patrick Gn., 58, 59 

Parthenon Frieze, 7 

Pelham, 106, 132 

Pearl by First Consul, 137 

Peter's Halcorn, 166 

Percheron, V, 178, 179, 180, 181, 

182 
Phaeton, 65 
Philippines, 146, 163 
Plumbing in Stables, 223 
Polkan, 183 
Police Riders (N. Y. Traffic 

Squad), 241 
Position of Feet in Riding, 244 
PoiTOU (Jack), 198 
Potomac, 153, 154 
Princess, 111, 112 
Prioress, 65 
PuRDY, 47, 48, 50 

QuiNCY, Joslah, 45 

Rarus, 132 

Randolph, John, 47, 48, 49 

Randolph Horse, 85 

Rattler, 105 

Revolutionary War, 11, 42 

Revenge, 85, 86 

Richard Owen, 3 

Richards, A. Keene 32, 33, 166 

Romans, 8 

Royal Gift, 188 

Robert McGregor, 175, 176 

Rockingham, 137 

Roxana, 29 



286 



INDEX 



Rough Ridebs, 239 
Russian Cavalry, ix 
Running Away, 258, 259 
Rysdyk, Wm. M., 117, 121, 123 

Santo Domingo, 8 

Sampson, 101 

Salvator, 71, 72 

Sales, from Private Stables, 

213, 214 
S.ujtfON, Dr. D. E., 167, 176, 177 
Sensation, 70 
Springbok, 70 
Spendthrift, 70 
Sheba, Queen of, 19 
Sherman Morgan, 85, 87 
Show Ring Horses, 216 
Shoeing, 229, 230 
Silas Deane, 10 
Sir Archy, 43, 44, 57 
Sir Henry, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 40, 

100 
Smetanka, 183, 184 
Solomon, 18, 19 
South Carolina Jockey Club, 

41 
Spanish Horses, 8 
Speedway (N. Y.), 128 
Spurs, 246 

Spirit of the Times, 109 
Stockton, Commodore, 56 
Stump the Dealer, 166 
Standard Bred Trotter, v, 114, 

115, 124, 126, 139 
Stable Construction, 220 
Stable Drainage, 220 
Stable Ventilation, 220 
Stud Book, English, 25 



St. Julien, 132 

SUNOL, 132 

Tadousac, 9 

Ten Broeck, Richard, 57, 58. 

63, 64, 65 
Ten Broeck, 65, 67 
Tenny, 72 

Teysul, King of Nejd, 31 
Thora, 71 
The Bard, 71 
The Abbot, 132 
Thoroughbred, v, 13, 27, 40 
Tom Ochiltree, 70 
Tom H.\l, 166 
Top G.M.LANT, 104 
Troubadour, 71 
Training and Breaking, 262 
Trotting Horse Drivers, 252 
Tracy, Gen. Benj. F., 129 
Treatment of a Tired Horse, 

227 
Tredwell, John, 116, 120 
Turf, Field and Farm, 124, 129 

Uncas, 70 

Upton, Major Roger D., 30 

V.u.uE OF Horses and Mules 

in U. S., Ill 
Van Meter's Waxy, 166 
Vermont Morgan, 91 
Virgil 
Virginia, 9, 40 

Warfield, Dr. 
Wagner, 51, 52 

Wallace, Wm. H., 20, 94, 95, 
124, 126 



INDEX 



287 



Wakranties, 215 

Walters, Mr., of Baltimore, 

178 
Washington, George, 188, 189 
Warrior (Jack), 190 
Washing and Use of WateR» 

228 
Wadsworth, Gen. Wm., 138, 139 
Wells, General, 58 
Weatherby, Messrs. 25, 101 
West Point Riders, 240 
Weasel Morgan or Fenton 

Horse, 85 



WiLDAm, 41 

Winthrop Morrill, 93 

woodburn, 54 

Woodruff, Hiram, 104, 111, 

119 
Woodbury Morgan, 85, 90 

Xenophon, 274 

Young Bashaw, 136, 137 
Young Traveler, or Hawkins 
Horse, 85 

Zilcaadi, 31 



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